Institutional Contexts, the Management of Patent Portfolios, and the Role of Public Policies Supporting New Entrepreneurial Ventures

This paper aims to contribute to our understanding of the relationships between firm strategies, the design of institutional contexts on behalf of public agents and the stimulation of diffused entrepreneurship within the economic system. In particular, it analyzes the way in which firm patent portfolio management strategies may systematically hinder the emergence of entrepreneurial endeavours within the economic system and, on this basis, critically discusses how the acknowledgement of these interactions should influence the design of public policies at the economic system level. Being essentially explorative in nature, the paper brings to light conceptual arguments and explore in depth their normative potential in terms of policy making using of series of data taken from a set of microcases of different institutional contexts and economic sectors (i.e., the biotech and nanotech ones).