We analyze the impact of an increase in the availability of complementary assets on an incumbent's R&D investment and on start-up formation in the framework of a quality augmented linear duopoly (respectively monopoly) model building on Symeonidis (2003). This framework allows us to illustrate the driving forces behind our results in a transparent and simple way. An Online Appendix shows that our results qualitatively carry over to a more general duopoly setting in which market demand is positively affected by the incumbent's R&D investment.