Innovation Complementarities in Open Source Software

Seminario de Investigación del IIEP
Innovation Complementarities in Open Source Software
Expositor | Sergio Petralia | Professor Utrecht University

Abstract
This article shows that organizations synchronize their patenting activity and contributions to Open Source Software (OSS), providing evidence that the ‘open source puzzle’ can be understood as an organizational response to OSS projects being complementary to their innovation processes. These findings result from analysing the timing of patent filings and OSS submissions using a novel database that links two decades of contributions to 50 of the most popular OSS projects with patent filings in the United States for 1203 organizations, which represent the 25.5 % of all patents granted and the 38 % of all OSS contributions in this period.