Unpacking the Relationship between Corporate Research Labs & Firm Performance

What effect does investment in R&D have on firm performance? The papers in this symposium consider a particular form of R&D investment— namely, corporate research laboratories, seeking to unpack the relationship between the firms’ use of corporate research labs to pay- offs to R&D investments. Each paper in the symposium presents a different lens on how corporate research laboratories create value for the parent firms. Arora, Belenzon, Kosenko, Suh and Yafeh argue that corporate research labs can fill institutional voids. Knott and Vinokurova document persistence of corporate research labs over time and the labs' negative impact on research productivity. Martins and Soares investigate whether firms are able to retain the knowledge generated after the labs shut down. Finally, Arts, Cassiman, and Hao develop a new measure for the degree to which R&D investment translates into technological differentiation and show that such differentiation is especially valuable in markets characterized by product competition and high R&D intensity. Unpacking the Relationship between Corporate Research Labs and Firm Performance Presenter: Natalya Vinokurova; The Wharton School, U. of Pennsylvania