Strategic Spin-off: a new incentive contract for managing R&D researchers

Innovation is a strategic challenge for high-tech companies and as such, justifies large investments in R&D. After exploring the limits of the underlying postulates of the organizational management of innovation (the necessary specialisation of researchers, the possibility of human discontinuity of innovation and possibility of controlling researchers), the objective of this paper is to show that the relationship between managers and researchers is characterised by asymmetric information (Laffont , J. J. (1985). Economie de l’incertain et de l’information, Economica.) to the benefit of the researchers. This asymmetry supposes the setting up of management practices which incite researchers to optimise the company’s interests, but this can only be done to at the expense of management control. In R&D activities, the informational asymmetry in agency relationship can be overcome by incentive managerial practices (Jensen, M. C., & Meckling, W. H. (1976) Theory of the firm: managerial behavior, agency cost, and ownership structure. Journal of Financial Economics, 3(4), 305–360.). The relationship between the manager (principal) and the researcher (agent), can be resolved by setting up the practice of strategic spin-off. This practice which enables a researcher to create a company based on work that he himself has carried out within the R&D department of his “mother” company, constitutes both an economic incentive (through the status of shareholder) and a symbolic one (through the status of entrepreneur). The incentive is strong for the researcher both to reveal his information and to obtain financial value from his research. Implementing this incentive contract means putting into place certain managerial and organisational practices designed to accompany the researcher–entrepreneur: (training, incubator, venture-capital structure etc.). The practice of strategic spin-off is beginning to emerge in high tech enterprises. This is why we have chosen to make an in-depth case study of the French company most involved in strategic spin-off, namely France Telecom.