When novelty is the norm

This study investigated the relationship between uncertainty, decision-making and investments for IP creation within a Research and Technology Organisation (RTO). RTOs are organisations whose task it is to innovate and create value for others by means of research and development (R&D). These R&D activities result in intangible resources, intellectual property (IP), and within this resource set in specific intangible assets, intellectual property rights (IPR). IP is a vital intangible resource which increases the competitiveness of organisations and societies. IP is difficult to manage. It is never certain whether a novel innovation, even when it is technologically superior to existing solutions, will be successfully adopted by firms, consumers, governments or citizens. This uncertainty makes it difficult to valuate IP. Despite these uncertainties RTOs continue to successfully deliver novel innovations which meet market and societal needs. This study aims to better understand, given the perpetual level of uncertainty, how decisionmakers within RTOs judge to which IP creation activities they should, or should not, allocate scarce resources. This study demonstrates that for RTOs uncertainty is perpetual due to the nature of the R&D process. This perpetual uncertainty influences decision-making processes on investments in IP creation. The influence of perpetual uncertainty is observable through the deployed heuristics of the decisionmakers. Heuristics are decision-making processes based on simple rules used in contexts of uncertainty when information is overwhelming, scarce or even absent and the outcome of their decisions cannot be reliably predicted in advance. Decisionmakers experience their decision-making on investments in IP creation as a onedirectional process within an interlinking set of processes, strategic market based on (a) the desired temporal market position of their organisation and (b) a specific function the created IP has to fulfil in the market. This strategy is executed via a string of individual investment decisions. For each investment decision, decisionmakers have been found to rely on the use of heuristics, using their past experiences to weigh and rank information provided to them. The information is weighed and ranked by means of the perceived trustworthiness of the source of the information and on the credibility of the information this source provided.