Abstract：
Pharmaceutical managers have been encouraged to look to acquisitions and alliances for innovation. However, the literature warns that the capacity of a company to \'absorb\' new knowledge is limited. Here, we introduce corporate divestitures as a tool for freeing up managerial attention. We build a sample of 349 companies, which announced 1784 divestitures and filed 63523 patents, over a 15-year period. We show that innovating companies that divest more produce more and improved patents, and those that divest to create corporate focus also produce more breakthroughs. In doing so, we introduce divestitures as an innovation tool, highlight the importance of the absorptive capacity of a company when discussing innovation, and add nuance to the discussion on external tools for innovation.
摘要：
鼓励制药经理寻求收购和联盟以进行创新。然而,文献警告说，公司吸收新知识的能力是有限的。这里,我们引入公司资产剥离作为释放管理层注意力的工具。我们建立了349家公司的样本，该公司宣布了1784项资产剥离，并提交了63523项专利，超过15年。我们表明，剥离更多的创新公司会产生更多和改进的专利，那些剥离以创造企业焦点的公司也产生了更多的突破。在这样做的时候，我们引入资产剥离作为一种创新工具，在讨论创新时强调公司吸收能力的重要性，并增加关于外部创新工具的讨论的细微差别。
