The role of patents in business ecosystem's coordination : how do leader firms maintain technological knowledge and create new trajectories ?

This paper aims at explaining how a leader firm is able to manage the successful coordination of a Business Ecosystem (BE) by strategically managing its patents. From that perspective, patents are not only used as an "exclusion" and innovation protection tool but more as a new way to coordinate and secure BE. We show that thanks to an active licensing-out strategy to subcontracting SMEs a leader firm can ensure the stability and sustainability of the BE. Indeed the firm gives the opportunity to its subcontractors to exploit the patents and develop new products applied to new markets and consequently develop new businesses. So far, they maintain technological knowledge but also create unanticipated technological trajectories by enabling new potential applications