Document Type

Article

Publication Date

2005

Status

Accepted

Abstract

All too often within organizations and communities, innovations are not generated or put to use as rapidly or as broadly as they could be. Chief targets for blame include the problems of transaction costs, agency costs, lack of coordination, and improper incentives. Borrowing from the rich literature in the field generally known as new institutional economics, which has studied these types of problems more broadly, this Article elucidates how some practical tools might be expected to mitigate such problems. Particular arrangements of formal law and informal practice may help reach across the "valley of death" between early stage technologies and their downstream commercial deployment. Depending on the circumstances of a given situation, different practices and different aspects of the legal regimes of intellectual property, antitrust, business associations, bankruptcy, property, and contract may prove most helpful. Elucidating at least as many questions for further empirical research as answers in the form of practical tips for structuring transactions, this Article focuses on the particular mechanisms by which the problems and proposed solutions might actually operate.

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