Competition in Product Design: An Experiment Exploring Innovation Behavior

Abstract

We experimentally investigate competition for innovations in a patent race scenario. Pairs of subjects compete as seller firms on a duopoly market, investing in risky search. Successful innovations resulting thereof are rewarded via temporary monopoly rents. Classifying investor types reveals that most of them invest according to objective investment criteria, such as probability of search success and cash flow, as well as to non-pecuniary criteria, such as intensity of competition and relative performance. For a minority, however, no such correlation is ascertained.