Innovation assets and firm survival: empirical evidence on patent value from U.S. IPO firms

In this paper, we study the effect of patent value on the post-IPO survival of U.S. firms across various industries from 2001 to 2017. Using Cox Proportional Hazards models, we find that patent ownership significantly reduces the risk of delisting, with distinct contributions from the economic and scientific dimensions of patent value. Economic value, capturing the monetization potential, significantly reduces the delisting risk especially for non-high-tech firms and in non-crisis periods. On the other hand, scientific value, capturing the long-term technological progress, reduces risk of delisting for high-tech firms and those went public during crisis period. Notably, when both economic value and scientific value are included in our main model, the scientific value becomes insignificant. This underscores that the market has a stronger emphasis on the monetization potential of innovation over its scientific achievement.