Intellectual property (IP) forms an important but often contested building block for ventures practicing digital and sustainable entrepreneurship. Specifically, the open and open-ended nature of digital and sustainable innovation challenges the principles of traditional IP management and gives rise to tensions. In her doctoral research, Sarah van Santen examines how tensions between stability and change, between knowledge sharing and knowledge control, and between social, environmental and economic value are manifested and managed through IP.
What challenges do you focus on in your research?
“To the extent that IP decisions can be rigid, i.e. hard to amend or reverse, and/or exclusionary, IP can result in tensions due to the open and open-ended nature of innovation in digital and sustainable entrepreneurship. Notably, opposing demands with regard to stability and change, knowledge sharing and control, and social, environmental and economic value pull in different directions when it comes to IP, necessitating management, orchestration and resolution.”
How do you address the problem with your research?
“This thesis consists of one literature study and two empirical studies, one of which is a semi-longitudinal comparative case study of digital technology-based ventures, while the other is a cross-sectional interview study of sustainable ventures in the fashion industry. Analyzing venture creation processes and innovation and IP decisions, tensions are identified, while their manifestation in, and management through IP is examined.”
What are the main findings of your research?
“This thesis finds that ventures make their IP decisions and design their IP artifacts so as to find complementarity between opposing demands. For instance, they may delay irreversible decisions to mitigate path dependence and design early IP to be conceptual, so as to act as a calling card and invite stakeholder co-creation. They may protect their knowledge to a threshold level while sharing the rest.”
“Likewise, ventures may use their IP to capture a minimum level of economic value that will ensure their survival while prioritizing social and environmental value beyond this level. These considerations don’t prompt ventures to use less IP, but to use their IP differently: to maintain flexibility, share knowledge and co-create value where possible, and to make commitments, protect competitive advantage and capture value where necessary.”
What do you hope your research will lead to?
“I hope that my research will spark debate on the role of IP for low-powered actors such as startups, society and the environment. IP consists of a wide range of formal and informal governance mechanisms that can both exacerbate and redress power imbalances in (systemic) collaboration. I hope that my research alerts practitioners and academics to the consequences of power asymmetries and the importance of addressing them with integrity and equitability. I aim to have demonstrated how the formal tools and informal mechanisms of the IP system can be leveraged to both increase the appropriability of low-powered actors, and decrease the appropriability of high-powered actors in order to improve outcomes for all.”
Read the thesis: Managing tension in open and open-ended innovation: The role of intellectual property in digital and sustainable entrepreneurship
Public defence: 1 June 2026 at 13.15
Supervisor
- Professor, Entrepreneurship and Strategy, Technology Management and Economics