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In light of the recent economic crisis, many industrial firms attempt to capture additional value from their technologies by means of open innovation strategies. Besides acquiring external technology, many firms therefore increasingly try to license their own technology to other firms either exclusively or in addition to its application in their own products. This article shows that technology licensing offers important strategic benefits beyond generating licensing revenues, which underscore the need for an integrated management of technology licensing activities. Therefore, this article extends the concept of job-related markets that was recently developed in the managerial literature. A ‘job’ is the fundamental problem that a customer needs to resolve in a particular situation. Managers may transfer this job-related understanding to technology licensing activities because the right ‘job’ for a technology may be outside a firm’s boundaries, and it may help firms to identify additional licensing opportunities. On this basis, the article presents the concept of an integrated technology exploitation roadmap, which allows firms to use the job-related markets to integrate technology licensing in their strategic planning processes. An example of a machinery firm shows how this roadmap may contribute to strengthening a firm’s licensing business.

“Licensing revenues make up a substantial portion of our revenues from some technologies, and an exclusive product focus is not always beneficial.” This insight was gained in one of our interviews with an innovation manager of a large European machinery firm, and it summarizes the recent trend towards active technology licensing that can be observed in many industries (Cesaroni, 2003 and Gambardella et al., 2007). In light of the current economic crisis, many industrial firms attempt to capture additional value from their technologies. As a consequence, many companies increasingly try to license their own technology to other firms (Fosfuri, 2006 and Granstrand, 2004). While the inward transfer of technology already is commonplace with the trend towards open innovation, the outward transfer of a firm’s own proprietary technology has only recently become an important dimension of corporate strategy (De Man and Duysters, 2005, Durrani et al., 1998, Kim, 2009, Murovec and Prodan, 2009, Spithoven et al., 2010 and Veugelers et al., 2010). Many firms are now willing to actively license technology, but they often fail to reap the benefits from licensing (Chesbrough, 2003 and van de Vrande et al., 2009). By contrast, some pioneering companies achieve substantial benefits from outward technology transfer (Kim and Vonortas, 2006 and Rivette and Kline, 2000). These successful examples underscore the opportunities that firms may achieve by integrating technology licensing into corporate strategic planning. Under today’s challenging economic conditions, successful licensing may strongly contribute to sustaining superior performance by capturing value from a firm’s technologies (Arora et al., 2001 and Teece, 2006). For instance, IBM and Dow Chemical generate hundreds of millions of dollars in annual licensing revenues, and Texas Instruments received about 50 percent of its net income from licensing over multiple years (Chesbrough, 2007 and Rivette and Kline, 2000). Many firms are unable to fully capitalize on their technological knowledge internally, and technology licensing allows them to capture additional value from this knowledge. Procter & Gamble, for example, only uses about 10 percent of its technologies in its own products, and this provides great opportunities for technology licensing (Huston and Sakkab, 2006). In a similar vein, Motorola estimates that the external exploitation of its cell-phone technologies could add as much as $10 billion to its annual revenues (Lichtenthaler, 2007). In addition, firms may realize various strategic benefits, which have an indirect effect on monetary performance (Arora et al., 2001). Besides these positive effects, technology licensing involves substantial risks. In particular, it may lead to strengthening competitors because of diffusing competitively relevant know-how (Rivette and Kline, 2000). This ‘rent dissipation effect’ (Fosfuri, 2006) constitutes the main reason for employees’ negative attitudes to technology licensing that prevail in many firms. These negative attitudes may be explained by the underlying fear of transferring ‘corporate crown jewels’ (Kline, 2003). Along with the great opportunities, the major risks of licensing technology underline the importance of integrated technology exploitation strategies, which consider interdependencies between internal technology application in a firm’s own products and outward technology transfer by means of licensing (Fosfuri, 2006 and Teece, 1998). However, prior research has relatively neglected technology licensing in strategic planning despite its increasing managerial importance. Prior licensing research is mainly limited to managerial works (e.g., Rivette and Kline, 2000) or to the analysis of particular motives for technology licensing, especially foreign market entry (e.g., Contractor, 1984). Consequently, technology exploitation in open innovation processes has received insufficient attention. Despite the major impact of research into open innovation (Chesbrough, 2006 and West et al., 2006), our understanding of technology exploitation in this context is limited. This research deficit is underlined by the managerial difficulties of many companies which contrast with the enormous success of some pioneering firms in actively licensing technology (Escher, 2003 and Lichtenthaler, 2007). The examples of these pioneering firms indicate that a firm’s strategic planning activities play a critical role in developing a successful technology licensing program (Chesbrough, 2007). In addition, prior research has shown that most firms which actively commercialize technology are also deeply involved in acquiring external technology (Lowe and Taylor, 1998). One major reason for this finding may be the strategic technology planning of these firms in open innovation processes (Chesbrough, 2003 and Grant and Baden-Fuller, 2004). Therefore, this paper examines an important field of strategic technology planning in the context of open innovation, i.e., the strategic planning of technology licensing activities. This issue has recently been highlighted as an area ripe for further study (Gassmann, 2006, Lichtenthaler and Ernst, 2009 and West et al., 2006). The remainder of this article is structured as follows. In Section 2, the benefits from technology licensing are briefly addressed. In Section 3, the paper presents a so-called job-related understanding of markets, which may help to identify additional application opportunities for a firm’s technology. In Section 4, the implications of this job-related market view in the context of open innovation processes are discussed. In Section 5, the paper presents the concept of product-technology roadmaps (Kostoff and Schaller, 2001), which may help to develop effective technology planning processes. In Section 6, we present a conceptual approach to extend roadmapping instruments in response to opening innovation processes. This extended roadmap was developed in a case study of the strategic technology planning processes of a machinery company. In Section 7, the article’s theoretical and managerial implications are discussed, and directions for future research are presented.

The concept of an integrated technology commercialization roadmap may help firms to overcome their managerial difficulties in actively licensing technology. In addition, it points the firms’ attention in strategic technology planning to outward technology transfer, which represents a complementary mode of technology exploitation to a firm’s internal product business (Davis and Harrison, 2001 and Teece, 2006). Moreover, it improves internal communication in the process of deciding on external technology exploitation (Arora et al., 2001 and Escher, 2003). As such, this paper emphasizes that firms should take an integrated view comparing their current and future technology assets with internal and external technology exploitation opportunities (Rivette and Kline, 2000 and Teece, 2006). Accordingly, the increasing openness of innovation processes may lead academics and managers to rethink traditional assumptions on the relationship between product marketing and technology licensing (Adam et al., 1988 and Contractor, 1984) because these two technology commercialization channels are complements rather than substitutes. The variety of strategic motives for technology licensing, e.g., setting industry standards, highlight the interdependencies between product business and licensing (Arora et al., 2001 and Conner, 1995). Although strategic openness constitutes a necessary condition for actively licensing technology, it is most likely insufficient for establishing a successful out-licensing program (Lichtenthaler and Ernst, 2009). In open innovation processes, technology licensing is not a marginal activity that may be managed exclusively by a dedicated licensing function (Fosfuri, 2006 and Kline, 2003). Rather, it should be integrated into corporate strategic planning, e.g., by means of integrated technology commercialization roadmaps. A systematic approach to internal and external technology exploitation based on integrated roadmaps may constitute a major step towards successfully balancing the benefits and risks of outward technology transfer. Moreover, it may facilitate ‘planned emergence’ types of strategic planning processes (Grant, 2003), in which the overall strategy and the general guidelines provide a context for individual keep-or-sell decisions (Lichtenthaler and Ernst, 2009). Besides focusing on individual keep-or-sell decisions, prior research has concentrated on the importance of strategic openness in technology exploitation (Davis and Harrison, 2001 and Rivette and Kline, 2000). Beyond strategic openness, however, a thorough understanding of integrated roadmaps and job-related markets may help firms to achieve the opportunities of open technology exploitation strategies despite the imperfections in the markets for technology. This capability-based strategic perspective is further backed by the examples of some pioneering firms, e.g., IBM and Dow Chemical, which indicate that a firm’s strategic planning plays a critical role in successfully commercializing technology assets (Chesbrough, 2007 and Lichtenthaler and Ernst, 2009). These pioneering firms have overcome initial barriers for opening up strategic technology planning. Among these barriers are most industrial firms’ traditional focus on their internal product business (Teece, 2006), the general resistance to change (Argyris, 1993), the specific fear of building up competitors by commercializing ‘corporate crown jewels’ (Kline, 2003), inefficient organizational processes and structures for technology licensing (Lichtenthaler, 2007), and the new heuristics that the job-related market understanding requires (Christensen et al., 2007). In this context, systematic planning tools for open innovation processes, such as integrated technology commercialization roadmaps, may not only help firms to balance the benefits and risks of technology licensing. In addition, they allow for sizing up a firm’s markets because job-related markets in open innovation processes are usually much larger than product category-defined markets in closed innovation processes (Chesbrough, 2003, ChiaroniPlease provide complete bibliographic details for Ref. [chiaroni et al., 2010] if available. et al.,, Christensen et al., 2007, Lichtenthaler and Lichtenthaler, 2009 and Nieto and Santamaria, 2007). While many firms have become aware of the relevance of technology licensing, others have not yet recognized its importance, and these firms are in danger of missing major opportunities. Along with the trend towards open innovation, an integrated approach to strategic technology planning will most likely gain further importance in the future because firms will continue to actively license technology. Thus, it will become increasingly difficult for firms to completely refrain from outward technology transfer, which will not merely be an option but a necessity to keep up with competition.