Patient Capital and Disruptive Technological Innovation: A Dynamic Model of Firms’ Technology Choice

DOI

10.2991/978-94-6239-652-4_17How to use a DOI?

Keywords

Patient capital; Disruptive technological innovation; Capital time orientation; Technological choice; Firm-level innovation

Abstract

Disruptive technological innovation is characterized by long development horizons, high uncertainty, and delayed returns, making firms’ innovation strategies particularly sensitive to the time orientation of capital. Using panel data on Chinese A-share listed firms from 2011 to 2023, this study examines the relationship between patient capital and firms’ disruptive technological innovation, measured by firms’ entry into new technological domains based on patent-level International Patent Classification (IPC) codes. Employing a two-way fixed effects model, the results show that patient capital is positively associated with firms’ disruptive technological innovation, including both disruptive invention and utility model patents, with stronger associations observed among non-state-owned firms, firms with lower financing constraints, larger firms, and those operating in high-technology industries. To interpret these empirical patterns, the study develops a dynamic theoretical framework linking capital time orientation to firms’ technology choice under intertemporal trade-offs, highlighting how greater capital patience increases the relative attractiveness of innovation strategies with delayed and uncertain returns. By integrating formal theoretical analysis with firm-level evidence, this study provides a coherent perspective on how patient capital shapes the direction of technological innovation without relying on explicit mechanism testing.

Copyright

© 2026 The Author(s)

Open Access

Open Access This chapter is licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/), which permits any noncommercial use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license and indicate if changes were made.

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TY  - CONF
AU  - Yuanlin Wu
AU  - Huajun Zheng
PY  - 2026
DA  - 2026/04/19
TI  - Patient Capital and Disruptive Technological Innovation: A Dynamic Model of Firms’ Technology Choice
BT  - Proceedings of the  2026 5th International Conference on Engineering Management and Information Science (EMIS 2026)
PB  - Atlantis Press
SP  - 155
EP  - 166
SN  - 2352-538X
UR  - https://doi.org/10.2991/978-94-6239-652-4_17
DO  - 10.2991/978-94-6239-652-4_17
ID  - Wu2026
ER  -