Not necessarily the right question, but then again....
Short manipulation and illegal naked shorting harm shareholders directly by diluting their stakes. Companies are forced to raise capital at very high cost as a result of a manipulatively depressed per share price for their common stock.
But maybe your question is the right question too....
Short manipulators also inhibit companies in their quest for capital to adequately fund their product development. For instance, if Torvec's share price was higher historically, besides avoiding the dilutive effect, the company might've been able to raise more money than they did at the right time, which in turn could have afforded them more resources, for example, more engineers and a dynamometer sooner.
And of course, since short manipulation hit Torvec's stock price hard and the fallacy of it could be understood, possible joint partners may have looked at the company's stock price and gotten scared away. Optics are everything sometime. Further, a big player could also muscle Torvec's IP away from them, knowing a short-targeted company couldn't afford a proper legal remedy.
A short manipulator can also go so far as to directly sabotage a company. He can, for example, call a potential customer, fill them with uncertainty or even offer an under-the-table deal: you don't inhibit me in shorting the crap outta this mark, and you'll get the tech for pennies in the end. It's a plausible scenario....
