Propensity to patent by family firms

This paper provides new evidence of innovation processes in family firms by investigating their attitude toward the protection of innovation outputs. More specifically, the main objective is to understand, through the SEW (Socioemotional Wealth) lens, whether innovative family firms tend to use patents as a tool for protecting intellectual property. Based on a sample of 229 Italian companies that make R&D investments, our analysis highlights that degree of alignment with the family business model is a significant predictor of a firm's attitude toward protecting innovation with patents, even though not all of the dimensions of a family business have the same effect. When disentangling the effect of three different indicators (i.e., family ownership, family governance and the presence of young successors), family involvement in the board of directors is a negative significant driver, the presence of young successors is a positive driver, and ownership has no effect. (C) 2016 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.