This paper examines the maintenance decisions for intellectual property (IP) that require continuous investment in an uncertain market environment. We propose a microfoundation-based theory that incorporates market friction, market connection and escalation of commitment from the managers. In a dynamic market with frictions, managers with weak market connection need longer time to reach successful transactions, compared to the strongly connected ones. Moreover, escalating behavior could make it harder for the less connected managers to abandon their IP assets even when the embedded value becomes obsolete, which leads to inefficiently longer maintenance and an unforeseen social loss. The model further suggests that removing frictions in the market facilitates transactions and reduces the performance gap between different managers. We provide empirical evidence that is consistent with the theory, using data on patents from individual innovators with different levels of market connection. The study contributes to the discussion on organizational implications of escalation of commitment, and also shed light on the importance of market connection to value capture of small innovative businesses.

本文研究了在不确定的市场环境中需要持续投资的知识产权（IP）维护决策。我们提出了一个基于微观基础的理论，该理论结合了市场摩擦，市场联系和管理者承诺的提升。在充满摩擦的动态市场中，与紧密联系的管理者相比，缺乏紧密联系的管理者需要更长的时间才能成功进行交易。此外，不断升级的行为可能会使联系不紧密的管理者更难以放弃其IP资产，即使内在价值已过时，这也导致维护效率低下，维护效率低下和无法预见的社会损失。该模型进一步表明，消除市场摩擦有利于交易并缩小不同经理人之间的绩效差距。我们使用来自具有不同市场联系水平的单个创新者的专利数据，提供与理论相符的经验证据。这项研究有助于讨论承诺升级对组织的影响，也阐明了市场联系对小型创新企业价值获取的重要性。