Establishing the importance weight of appropriability mechanism by using AHP: the case of the China’s electronic industry

Companies innovate to survive tough competition in a rapidly changing environment. Since companies have to invest much money and time in R&D for innovation, strategies to secure the appropriability of R&D spending may override all other concerns. Appropriability refers to the extent to which the return on innovation investment is exclusively protected and secured. Appropriability mechanisms are reported to typically comprise patent and trade secret. Corporate strategies for appropriability mechanisms to secure the return on innovation investment are highly important because companies might win or lose the competition depending on their selection of appropriability mechanisms. As Chinese ICT companies invest aggressively in R&D to enter the global market, it becomes a challenging issue for them to secure appropriability. This study aims to find which appropriability mechanisms Chinese ICT experts think are more important for their ICT industry. The Delphi method was employed to categorize appropriability mechanisms into three groups, namely, patent-related group, secrecy-related group, and complementary operation-related group. And the relative importance of the mechanisms in each group were figured out using the AHP method.