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Patterns of Research and Licensing Activity of Science and Engineering Faculty
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... The cohort the professor belongs to reflects instead the norms regarding commercialization that prevailed during the researcher's training (Azoulay, Ding, and Stuart, 2007;Thursby and Thursby, 2007). Both factors showed some correlation with academic patenting, but it has been difficult to conclude with regard to their effect because of their mutual entanglement. ...
... Based on longitudinal data, Azoulay, Ding, and Stuart, (2007) and Thursby and Thursby, (2007) find that, once controlling for cohorts, patenting decreases over the life-cycle. However, while the authors of the former paper argue that newer cohorts are more likely to patent than are earlier cohorts, the latter finds opposite results. ...
... Controlling for the cohorts, we find that age plays positively on patenting. This confirms previous research evidencing a life-cycle effect in patenting (Azoulay, Ding, and Stuart, 2007;Carayol, 2007;Stephan et al., 2007;Thursby and Thursby, 2007). ...
Since Bush, (1945), governments of advanced economies have become aware of the importance of science for technical progress and economic growth. However, it is only very recently that researchers start being able to quantify the knowledge flows between academia and the private sector. In this thesis, I first measure the direct contribution of academics to invention, and then I go further by evaluating the impact of different public policies on academics’ incentives to invent. All the chapters are based on the French case, for which we have collected quasi-exhaustive data on the population of academics and their inventions over around twenty years. In the first chapter, I quantify academic invention in France and explore its individual and social drivers. I find that more than 11% of the patented inventions for the years 1995–2012 stem from academia, revising upwards prior estimations. Every year increase not only the number of academic inventions, but also the propensity of professors to invent (by 75% between 1995 and 2012). Given that the drivers of this diffusion remain unclear, I study the contribution of micro and meso level characteristics. I explore age and cohort effects: are young people trained in a more entrepreneurial culture more likely to invent, or less likely than older ones for their focus on advancingtheir career first? I find support for the latter, that is a life-cycle effect rather than a cohort effect. But invention is also a social phenomenon, so I wonder whether being surrounded by fellow inventors (in the lab or in the university) affects one’s ownpropensity to invent. My results indicate that a professor patents four times more inventions when colleagues in the lab invent one more patent per year on average. In the second chapter, I evaluate the impact of the university ownership regime on academic invention. This regime has been introduced in many advanced economies following the US pioneering Bayh-Dole Act. It consists in assigning intellectual property rights over academic inventions to universities, rather than to professors, companies or federal agencies, with the aim of encouraging academic invention and its transfer to society. France introduced its Innovation and Research Act in 1999. How does the effective implementation of the university ownership regime affect professors’ incentives to invent? I find that only some universities effectively implement the corresponding policy recommendations, and at different times. I use a Coarsened Exact Matching on universities followed by a difference-in-differences regression to iii compare academics in universities that took the step and increasingly managed their intellectual property to other similar academics in universities that have not taken the step. I find that, upon the implementation of the regime in their university, professors patent up to 20% more inventions. I conclude that it is efficient to allocate the intellectual property rights to universities, and suggest that negative effects observed in other countries may result from a lack of flexibility towards universities in the practical implementation of the regime. In the third chapter, I assess the impact of competitive science funding on academic invention. The French government introduced competitive funding for scientific research in 2005. A national research agency was created to support the production of higher quality fundamental knowledge. I merge to our previous database on professorsand patents the data on the projects they submitted in 2005-2009 and the funding decisions of the selection committees. In a Heckman probit regression, I find that academics with experience or who have contributed to innovation have a higher propensity to apply but are less likely to be selected by the agency.[...]
... Based on longitudinal data, Azoulay et al. (2007) and Thursby and Thursby (2007) find that, once controlling for cohorts, patenting decreases over the life-cycle. However, while the authors of the former paper argue that newer cohorts are more likely to patent than are earlier cohorts, the latter finds opposite results. ...
... Age 0.003 * * * 0.003 * * * 0.002 * * * 0.002 * * * (0.000) (0.000) (0.000) (0.000) Age squared − 0.000 * * * − 0.000 * * * − 0.000 * * * − 0.000 * * * (0.000) (0 patenting. This confirms previous research evidencing a life-cycle effect in patenting (Carayol, 2007;Stephan et al., 2007;Azoulay et al., 2007;Thursby and Thursby, 2007). When age is not included among regressors (column 1), the second, third and fourth cohort dummies are positively correlated with the outcome variable. ...
... However, when age is controlled for, cohort dummies are not significantly correlated with patenting anymore. This contrasts with Thursby and Thursby (2007) who find that more recent cohorts are in fact less likely to disclose inventions, controlling for tenure and age, or Azoulay et al. (2007) who evidenced the opposite. Professional status makes significant differences. ...
Although numerous public policies have been introduced to incentivize scholars and researchers employed in universities and public laboratories to generate and transfer inventions, the extent and drivers of any spread in patenting behavior within the academic community have not yet been fully documented. We propose a nationwide empirical investigation of patented academic inventions in France over nearly two decades which offers a number of results that are either new, or confirm previous insights on a much larger dataset. We find that the direct contribution of academia to the nation’s flow of patented inventions is revised upwards, up to eleven percent of all patented inventions. We also show that patenting behavior is more pervasive in the academic community than expected with one in five professors or researchers having invented at least one patent in nearly all fields of hard and life sciences. Even if academic patenting was strong before the 1999 reform favoring technology transfer, the propensity of professors and researchers to invent has significantly increased over the subsequent period. Though age plays positively on patenting, more recent cohorts of faculty members are not more likely to patent so that individual factors cannot fully explain the increasing propensity to patent. Lastly, we examine social and cultural factors (e.g. peer effects and local diffusion of behavioral practices), in particular within labs, which are found to be important drivers of the spread of patenting in the academic community.
... Our study extends this literature by asking if academics' perception of their universities' support for commercialization matter, which merges the institutional and individual streams of literature. Since not all highly published university academics seek to be involved in commercialization, there may be important but understudied factors intrinsic to such individuals (Agrawal and Henderson 2002;Azoulay et al. 2007;Thursby and Thursby 2007). Hence, our study may help university policymakers design more effective interventions to increase academics' interests in commercialization. ...
... However, although the extant literature suggests that university policies and culture have a strong impact on commercialization activities, not all qualified researchers seek to be involved in patent activities (Agrawal and Henderson 2002;Azoulay et al. 2007;Thursby and Thursby 2007). Thus, besides the human capital of the researchers, other individual-level factors such as the perceptions that academics have about the availability of university resources to support their needs in commercialization may also play a role in their patent activities and outcomes. ...
... The Bayh-Doyle Act of 1980, which granted universities the right to retain the rights to commercialize federally funded scientific discoveries, accelerated academic entrepreneurship in universities. Although the extant literature suggests that university policies and culture have a strong impact on commercialization activities, however, not all qualified researchers sought to be involved in patenting (Agrawal and Henderson 2002;Azoulay et al. 2007;Thursby and Thursby 2007). Hence, we sought to compare the extent to which an academic researchers' human capital and their perceptions of the availability of resources for academic entrepreneurship influenced patent applications. ...
The Bayh–Doyle Act of 1980 accelerated academic entrepreneurship in universities. However, not all qualified researchers sought to be involved in patenting. We compared researchers’ human capital and their perceptions of resource availability on patent applications. We collected primary data from biomedical principal investigators from 15 universities using a validated questionnaire. Our results from logistic regression strongly suggest that human capital had a stronger influence than perceptions of resource availability for commercialization activities on patent applications. The policy implications are that universities should seek to enhance the stock of human capital most associated with patenting behaviors to improve academic entrepreneurial outcomes.
... Breschi et alii (2005) examinent les profils des inventeurs académiques italiens. Thursby et Thursby (2007) présentent une étude exploratoire de la divulgation d'inventions par les chercheurs de six universités américaines. Même si elle ne présente pas d'analyse économétrique, il faut aussi mentionner l'étude de Wallmark (1997) dédiée aux profils des inventeurs de l'Université Chalmers. ...
... Dans ce sens, Stephan et alii (2007), dans leur étude portant sur l'édition 1995 d'une enquête sur les détenteurs d'un doctorat aux USA (laquelle comprenait une question relative aux brevets), ont montré que le nombre des brevets d'invention augmente avec le nombre d'années depuis la soutenance de la thèse. Néanmoins, Thursby et Thursby (2007) semblent obtenir un résultat opposé sur la génération de déclarations d'inventions (5) par les enseignants-chercheurs employés par six universités américaines. Afin d'éclairer cette contradiction, nous pourrions invoquer l'absence de contrôle d'un effet potentiel de cohorte dans l'étude de Stephan et alii réalisée sur des données en coupe. ...
... Stephan et alii (2007) ont trouvé un effet négatif de l'obtention de la "tenure" sur la production de brevets dans leur étude. Thursby et Thursby (2007) ont obtenu des résultats identiques sur la génération d'inventions. ...
Les universités et les autres institutions publiques de recherche ne sont plus seulement vues comme des contributeurs nets au stock de connaissances fondamentales mais également, de plus en plus, comme des contributeurs directs au flux d'inventions. Ainsi, dans la dernière décennie, le surplus de croissance qu'ont connu les États-Unis (comparativement à l'Europe) pourrait en partie être dû à la capacité de leurs universités à générer des inventions et à les transférer vers l'industrie. En France, la mise en place de services de transfert de technologie efficacesauseindesuniversitésetinstitutsderechercheconstitueencoreunenjeuimportantde politique publique. Or, pour qu'un tel transfert soit un succès, il requiert l'implication à différents stades des chercheurs et enseignants-chercheurs qui sont, dans une large mesure, autonomes dans l'allocation de leur temps entre leurs différents projets de recherche et les missions de transfert vers les entreprises. Une meilleure connaissance et compréhension de leurs comportements d'invention de brevets, qui restent cependant mal connus, constituent un objectif de premier plan aux yeux des autorités publiques et une question d'intérêt pour l'économiste. Dans cette perspective, cet article se propose d'éclairer les déterminants de l'invention de brevetsparplusde900chercheursetenseignants-chercheursmembresdeslaboratoiresaffiliés à l'université Louis Pasteur de Strasbourg (ULP), classée notamment première université de recherche française en termes d'impact par le European Report on Science and Technology (2003). Alors que la plupart des études empiriques sur les brevets académiques se concentrent sur le niveau de l'université, nous nous intéressons de manière originale au niveau des chercheurs et enseignants-chercheurs pour lesquels nous disposons d'informations précises relatives à leur âge, leur statut et à leurs publications, ainsi que des variables liées à leur laboratoire de recherche. Les premières nous permettent d'explorer la manière dont le régime d'incitation académique affecte la production de brevets. Les secondes nous permettent d'étudier les effets de l'organisation collective de la recherche sur les brevets. On pourrait en effet s'attendre à ce que l'organisation du laboratoire affecte la production de brevets. En particulier, les grands laboratoires sont-ils plus ou moins productifs ? Ou encore, comment la structure de financement du laboratoire affecte-t-elle la production de brevets ? La méthodologie employée consiste en un modèle de type Zero-Inflated Negative Binomial qui permetdeprendreencomptelanaturenon-linéaire,rareetdiscrèteduprocessusdeproduction debrevets.Cemodèlecomportedeuxparties:lapartierelativeaumodèlenégatifbinomialqui rend compte du nombre de brevets inventés quand l'individu est dans un régime de recherche
... They are a subset of the broader term 'academic patenting', defined as patents invented by university professors but not necessarily filed universities (see Lissoni 2013 for an overview and for Spain, see Martinez, Azagra andMaraut 2013 andMaraut 2014). 2 Concerns about potential conflicts of interest have also been echoed in the literature, but the empirical evidence available is either inconclusive or points at lack of negative effects. These concerns relate to threats from patents to scientific progress due to restrictions to disclosure and data sharing or to the use of research tools; changes in the direction of research to the detriment of more basic projects; substitution effect between patents and publications and decline of their quality over time; and finally, potential threats to the teaching mission of universities, with possible decline in students' publications and informal learning (Walsh, Cho, Cohen 2005;Mowery et al, 2004;Baldini, 2008;Breschi et al, 2008;Thursby and Thursby 2007;Franzoni and Scellato, 2011;Geuna and Nesta, 2006;Azagra Caro et al, 2003;Saragossi and van Pottelsberghe de la Potterie, 2003;Crespi et al, 2005;Lissoni et al, 2008;Lissoni et al, 2013). sector and society in general. ...
The aim of this article is to shed light on the decision-making process at university technology transfer offices and show that the last steps in the process of international patent extension, when costs step up, tend to be only taken conditional on the existence of a licensing agreement. This information has so far been underexploited by policymakers and innovation scholars in search of innovation indicators. We argue that the number of international patent families filed by a university can be used as a rough indicator of technology transfer activity mediated through patents, especially in the context of tight public university budgets and national patent systems with fee reductions for universities. To support our argument, we review qualitative information from interviews at technology transfer offices, regulations, and internal statutes from a selection of Spanish universities and present a statistical analysis of the relation between patent internationalisation and licensing.
... The TCO managed to attract 42 disclosures out of 176 faculty members. To put these numbers into perspective, Thursby and Thursby (2007), in their study of disclosures at six US universities over 17 years, find that on average 7.1% of faculty members disclosed per year, and 80% of faculty either never disclosed or disclosed only once in the seventeen year period. ...
Research faculty’s views of the merits of commercialisation and their role in the process can hinder or even sabotage technology transfer. Dispersing myths and addressing suspicion and deep misunderstandings held by communities of practice, such as the community of faculty researchers, is of paramount importance in order to develop a sense of comfort and build trust among faculty and the TCO. This is particularly true for non-entrepreneurial universities. Lack of shared understandings can make the job of the TCO arduous; equally, not addressing the cultural and moral aspects of technology transfer reproduces suspicion and mistrust. In support of this proposition, the article focuses on the relationship between TCOs and research staff in a non entrepreneurial research environment, the Agricultural University of Athens, to offer qualitative evidence showing the key importance of addressing the lack of trust and cultural gaps via education and training tailored to the needs of individual research teams.
... 2, 23% of permanent staff participated in at least one exploitation proposal. To put this number into perspective, Thursby and Thursby (2007), in their study of disclosures at six US universities over 17 years, find that on average just 7% of faculty members disclosed per year, whereas 80% of faculty either never disclosed or disclosed only once in the 17 year period. The much higher number of proposals created conditions of congestion, taking into account the limited funds and time available for the project. ...
Assessing the exploitation potential of university research is needed to improve the efficiency of a Technology Transfer Office (TTO) and to increase chances of picking up and supporting viable entrepreneurial projects. The paper proposes an assessment method that jointly looks into the technology and the commercialization perspectives of research exploitation projects. The commercialization perspectives are further subdivided to criteria characterizing the market opportunities and management team. The method is applied to an ad hoc TTO in the Agricultural University of Athens (AUA). In addition to selecting exploitation projects proposed by AUA researchers, the method is also used to design support services for the research teams during the commercialization process. Relating the assessment outcome to the support of exploitation is a topic that received limited attention so far. In the case of universities that are about to start investing in technology transfer, the proposed approach can assist management to define strategies and corresponding services for academic entrepreneurship that are in line with the organization’s research profile. For more mature technology transfer environments, the method can be used to diversify the services of the TTO, by including forms of interaction with industry and businesses better serving the research community.
... Joshua and Patricia (2005) showed that performance and the number of distinguished engineering faculty members are positively related. Thursby and Thursby (2003) found that a distinguished, senior faculty member is more likely to engage in commercial activity. Sources of success in innovation and the role of core researchers in university-industry collaboration has been studied by Baba et al. (2010). ...
The external circumstances for universities have been changing rapidly. In order to be competitive, survive and flourish, universities have turned to external sources to generate revenues. The literature refers to this phenomenon as academic capitalism, defined as the involvement of colleges and their faculty in market-like behaviours, which has become a key feature of higher education finances in most countries. As a result, technology transfer, technological commercialisation, and patents via industry–university collaboration represent a source of financial rewards. This paper explores the determinants of financial rewards of universities sourced from academic engagement through industry–university collaboration in South Korea. We have found that technology transfer per employees working at technology licensing offices, participation of engineering faculty, patent approvals, and the number of firms with incubators within universities significantly contributes to university revenues. The following determinants of financial performance are unexpectedly not contributors to revenue: technological commercialisation using technology transfer, distinguished faculty and incentive rules for inventors. In the light of these findings, it appears that an entrepreneurial university program is likely to play a strong role in university finances in Korea.
... Another factor to consider is relationship between the traditional roles of teaching and research, and academic entrepreneurship. There is a substantial literature on the impact of research productivity and quality on commercialisation, which has mostly found that higher research productivity is associated with higher commercialisation activity (Carayol, 2007;Thursby and Thursby, 2003), although Agrawal and Henderson (2002) find that the relationship is neutral, so that the publication and commercialisation are neither complements nor substitutes. This relationship may also be changing over time with the expansion of university-affiliated research centres and provision of grants linked to specific research projects (Dietz and Bozeman, 2005). ...
The academic and policy literatures have increasingly acknowledged that university engagement with the economy extends well beyond the private sector and includes the public and third (or not-forprofit) sectors. This observation, however, is not adequately reflected in most of the literature on university-industry interactions which focuses on issues related to the translation of university research for use in the private sector. As a consequence, little is known about the extent and factors
driving academic interactions with public and third sector organisations, and there is a risk that
government and institutional policies may underestimate the importance of these activities and offer support mechanisms for academic interactions which are not immediately driven by profit considerations. In this chapter we aim to challenge this relatively narrow interpretation of an interface between the university and external organisations by exploring the extent and determinants of academic interactions across all sectors, including private, public and third sector organisations. We find that the involvement of academics with private firms is substantial but less widespread than that with public and third sector organisations. We, therefore, empirically support the view that the contribution of the university to the economy and innovation processes should be conceptualised in a wider context of private, public and social innovation. Our analysis is based on a recently completed survey of UK academics, providing micro-data on over 22,000 academics in the sciences, social sciences, arts and humanities. The data are complemented using institution-level information on financial and logistical support for entrepreneurial activities.
... Books written on the subject have blamed research commercialization for everything from increasing undergraduate tuition to destroying the public's trust in the objectivity of the advice and analysis it receives from professors (Bok, 2003;Krimsky, 2003, Washburn, 2005. Others, however, have documented the inherent entrepreneurialism of faculty (Shane, 2004), while others have demonstrated that only a minority of science faculty attempt to commercialize their research (Thursby & Thursby, 2003). ...
We conducted a survey of directors of offices of technology transfer (TTOs) at U.S. academic institutions to determine how they are organized, tasked, financed, and motivated. We found some interesting quantitative data that have not been reported previously: (1) academic institutions spend on average 0.6% of their research budgets on transferring the technology resulting from their research programs, split 45% on patent protection and 55% on operating costs; and (2) over half the technology transfer programs bring in less money than the costs of operating the program, and only 16% are self-sustaining, bringing in enough income that, after distributions to inventors and for research, there are sufficient funds to cover the operating costs of the program. This leads to the surprising conclusion that the Bayh-Dole Act has been an unfunded mandate on academic institutions, and that academic institutions need to invest in their technology transfer operations in order to bring the benefits of their research to society.
... 15 In addition, because the gains to earn from big research budgets vary with the different stages of a career, the propensity of faculty members to engage in interchanges with industry was seen to be also dependent on lifecycle effects and on the choices of investigative pathways (Thursby and Thursby, 2003a). Whenever the contiguity of scientific and industrial effort faded, monetary incentives should be raised to compensate for the time taken by purely commercial activities with an unclear effect on the academic career (Thursby and Thursby, 2003b). ...
This chapter surveys the notion of 'academic entrepreneur', as it emerges from a wide range of contributions to the economics and sociology of science. Insights from those contributions are then used to examine critically the most recent literature on academic spin-offs and university-industry technology transfer. The chapter proceeds in a cumulative fashion. We start first with the rhetorical device of putting forward a 'straightforward definition' of academic entrepreneurship, one which is most intuitive and at the same time traceable in many recent policy initiatives, both in the US and in Europe (section 8.2). We then move on to survey the socio-economic literature dealing with the notion of 'entrepreneurship' in academic research. We suggest that contemporary science is the result of an 'entrepreneurial' effort, undertaken both by individual scientists and by the academic institutions that host them. The intensity and specific features of the entrepreneurial effort depend very much on the institutional characteristics of national academic systems, which we outline by looking briefly at the history of the US and French systems, the latter taken as the extreme example of the European case (section 8.3). In section 8.4 we examine the recent literature on spin-off firm creation, and briefly touch upon some related issues on intellectual property rights over academic research results. We suggest that both patenting and spin-off creation result from the broad entrepreneurial agendas described in section 8.3, and not merely from the individual scientists' profit-seeking attitudes. In section 8.5 we propose several policy implications and directions for future research.
... Accordingly, research by Zucker et al. (1998) suggests that researchers with an excellent publication record are also most likely to patent their research (see also Di Gregorio and Shane, 2003; Louis et al., 2001; Zucker and Darby, 1996). Recent empirical work con…rms the positive impact of publication numbers on the propensity to patent (Bercovitz and Feldman, 2008; Carayol, 2007; Stephan et al., 2007; Thursby and Thursby, 2007). Studies by Breschi et al. (2005) While most patentable research is also publishable, not all publishable research is patentable. ...
I provide evidence that university-industry collaboration is important for turning commercial opportunities into patents. I …nd that the number of publications and the support provided by the university are not conclusive in explaining a researcher's propensity to patent. Controlling for a variety of individual and departmental characteristics I …nd that research sponsored by industry is most likely to produce patents and more likely to produce patents owned by industry.
... Although the choice of research projects cannot be measured directly, existing indirect evidence suggests that the much-feared switch from basic to applied research in academia is not occurring. Thursby and Thursby (2002) conclude that changes in the direction of faculty research seem to be relatively less important than other factors in explaining the increased licensing activity. , as Hicks and Hamilton (1999) earlier, find no systematic change in the proportion of publications in basic versus applied journals between 1983 and 1999. ...
"This paper proposes a framework to analyze the effects of scientific and commercial incentives in R&D organizations. We build a simple repeated model of a researcher capable of obtaining innovative ideas. Although they reduce the time spent on research, we show that commercialization incentives also affect the choice of research projects. Commercial rewards induce a more intensive search for (ex post) path-breaking innovations, which are more likely to be generated through (ex ante) riskier research programs. We derive the organization's optimal incentive scheme in terms of the researcher's characteristics. We show that organizations should use a high level of commercial incentives for scientists who have strong or weak intrinsic preferences for research. For those with strong preferences, the organization needs to induce development, whereas for those with weak ones, it needs to induce effort." Copyright (c) 2010, The Author(s) Journal Compilation (c) 2010 Wiley Periodicals, Inc..
... skewed nature of licensing and royalty revenues, these enhanced income effects are not widely experienced by the average scientist. Yet, by increasing the amount of inequality in the reward structure of science they arguably affect the fabric of scientific collaboration as well as the satisfaction that average scientists experience from their work. Thursby and Thursby (2007), for example, find that 10.3 percent of US faculty at top universities discloses an invention to their university. While not all disclosures are patented, many are. The number of US patents assigned to universities has increased by a factor of 2.6 during the past 10 years from 1993 to 2003 (National Science Board 2006, tables 5–28). It ...
Scientific research has played a critical role in the life of the university for a considerable period of time, both in Europe
and in the US. While much remains the same in the relationship between science and the university, considerable change has
occurred in recent years. Here we outline three changes in this relationship, focusing both on the consequences for the university
and on questions of research interest to those interested in higher education. The three changes are: (i) increased incentives
to publish; (ii) changes in the reward system and (iii) increased reliance by governments and communities on universities
and institutes as a source of economic growth. (JEL codes: I23)
... Faculty contributing to knowledge and technology transfer, on the other hand, maintain that industry collaboration complements their own academic research by securing funds for graduate students and lab equipment, and by providing them with ideas for their own research (Lee, 2000). Financial rewards might even have a positive impact on the production of basic research because basic and applied research efforts might be complementary (Thursby et al., 2007) or because they might induce a selection of riskier research programmes (Banal-Estañol and Macho-Stadler, 2010). ...
The aim of this paper is to analyse the impact of university knowledge and technology transfer activities on academic research output. Specifically, we study whether researchers with collaborative links with the private sector publish less than their peers without such links, once controlling for other sources of heterogeneity. We report findings from a longitudinal dataset on researchers from two engineering departments in the UK between 1985 until 2006. Our results indicate that researchers with industrial links publish significantly more than their peers. Academic productivity, though, is higher for low levels of industry involvement as compared to high levels.
... 3 After the costs are recovered, the royalty income is divided between the university's transfer office, the faculty members listed as inventors and their departments. In many of these agreements 1 In recent years, in a large number of EU countries an increase in patenting has also been closely following the transfer of ownership of patents to universities (Geuna and Nesta, 2006). 2 One half of the firms surveyed byThursby and Thursby (2007)noted that they include delay of publication clauses in at least 90% of their university contracts. 3 Survey results byBlumenthal et al. (1986)indicate that faculty members whose research is supported by the industry are four times more likely than faculty without such support to report that their choices of research topics have been affected by the chance that the results would have commercial application. ...
This paper investigates the effects of monetary rewards from commercialisation on the pattern of research. We build a simple repeated model of a researcher capable to obtain innovative ideas. We analyse how academic and market incentives affect the allocation of the researcher’s time between research and development. We argue, however, that technology transfer objectives also affect the choice of research projects. Although commercialisation incentives reduce the time spent in research, they might also induce researchers to conduct research that is more basic in nature, contrary to what the “skewing problem” would presage. Monetary rewards induce a more intensive search for (ex-post) path-breaking innovations, which are more likely to be generated through (ex-ante) basic research programs. These results are shown to hold even if development delays publication.
... 24 This creates a strategic incentive for inventors to defer publication until their patent rights are securely granted, in which case subsequent inventors could simply cite the relevant patent. Second, other studies show the fraction of publishing scientists who also patent is small, and that the patent counts of the patenting scientists are small relative to their publication counts (Thursby and Thursby, 2004; Azoulay et al., 2005). While interesting objects of study, patent-paper pairs may not be numerous enough to affect our results. ...
A vast and often confusing economics literature relates competition to investment in innovation. Following Joseph Schumpeter, one view is that monopoly and large scale promote investment in research and development by allowing a firm to capture a larger fraction of its benefits and by providing a more stable platform for a firm to invest in R&D. Others argue that competition promotes innovation by increasing the cost to a firm that fails to innovate. This lecture surveys the literature at a level that is appropriate for an advanced undergraduate or graduate class and attempts to identify primary determinants of investment in R&D. Key issues are the extent of competition in product markets and in R&D, the degree of protection from imitators, and the dynamics of R&D competition. Competition in the product market using existing technologies increases the incentive to invest in R&D for inventions that are protected from imitators (e.g., by strong patent rights). Competition in R&D can speed the arrival of innovations. Without exclusive rights to an innovation, competition in the product market can reduce incentives to invest in R&D by reducing each innovator's payoff. There are many complications. Under some circumstances, a firm with market power has an incentive and ability to preempt rivals, and the dynamics of innovation competition can make it unprofitable for others to catch up to a firm that is ahead in an innovation race.
... Exploring the performance of 3,342 researchers engaged in licensing from six universities during a 17-year period, Thursby and Thursby (2003) find that although there has been a substantial increase in the proportion of faculty involved in disclosures, from 1 in 100 in 1983 to 1 in 10 in 1996-1999, licensing activity is concentrated among a minority of faculty, and the proportion of academic publications that reflect basic research remains constant over the period. They also find that tenured faculty members are more likely to disclose; thus, senior faculty are more likely to engage in commercial activities. ...
In this paper, we analyze the research productivity of faculty entrepreneurs at 15 research institutes using a novel database combining faculty characteristics, licensing information, and journal publication records. We address two related research questions. First, are faculty entrepreneurs more productive researchers (“star scientists”) compared to their colleagues? Second, does the productivity of faculty entrepreneurs change after they found a firm? We find that faculty entrepreneurs in general are more productive researchers than control groups. We use multiple performance criteria in our analysis: differences in mean publication rate, skewness of publication rate, and impact of publications (journal citation rate). These findings bring together previous work on star scientists by Zucker, Darby, and Brewer [Zucker, L. G., Darby M. R., & Brewer M. B. (1998). The American Economic Review, 88, 290–306.] and tacit knowledge among university entrepreneurs by Shane [Shane, S. (2002). Management Science, 48, 122–137.] and Lowe [Lowe, R. A. (2001). In G. Libecap (Ed.) Entrepreneurial Inputs and Outcomes. Amsterdam: JAI Press, Lowe, R.A. (2006). Journal of Technology Transfer, 31(4), 412–429]. Finally, we find that faculty entrepreneurs’ productivity not only is greater than their peers but also does not decrease following the formation of a firm. Copyright Springer Science+Business Media, LLC 2007
The purpose of this article is to deepen knowledge about Stanford University technology transfer and academic entrepreneurship. Technology transfer, including venture creation, is central to an iconic entrepreneurial university's development. Comparative case study, utilizing interviews, archival research and participant observation, conducted over the past 35 years, depict the phases of Stanford University's technology transfer practice, informal and formal. A self-organizing entrepreneurial ideology, deriving from serial entrepreneurs’ successes, impeded improvement. Recognizing underutilized potential, Stanford faculty and students undertook bottom-up initiatives, integrating research, education and entrepreneurship, creating support structures to fill entrepreneurship gaps. The Stanford-Silicon Valley (university-region) relationship exemplifies a broader entrepreneurial academic transformation, taking place at different rates, in various formats, in the US and globally. Different levels of external and internal support are required for different types of regions and academics at various levels of technology transfer interest and capabilities. A future trend is projected.
Cet article présente une étude empirique des déterminants de la production de brevets par plus de neuf cents chercheurs et enseignants-chercheurs de l'Université Louis Pasteur de Strasbourg. Nous montrons que la production de brevets varie avec l'âge, la carrière, les publications et la structure de financement du laboratoire.
Focusing on universities whose faculty has little understanding of technology transfer and the commercialization of academic research, we provide a case study of such a university and argue that even some elementary and indirect form of entrepreneurial training can positively affect faculty technology transfer. In light of the above, we seek to contribute to the literature exploring what makes technology transfer programs at Universities successful and our unique contribution lies on elucidating the link between university technology transfer and science and technology entrepreneurial education (STEE). To this effect, we discuss ways to develop integration processes among STEE and technology transfer offices.
Open innovation and continuously evolving collaborative schemes of key actors along the innovation chain increase the complexity of technology transfer. University TTOs need to adapt to new challenges and therefore move from their traditional role of facilitating patenting and licensing activities to one of active engagement and deep involvement in supporting the different stages of research commercialization. Building successful TTO business models requires aligning the TTO service offerings with the characteristics of research produced in the parent institution and to the various forms of assistance needed by academic staff to commercially exploit their research results.
We offer evidence on how the absence of entrepreneurship shapes the goals and expectations of faculty scientists about university technology commercialization. These results stem from a 2 year program in jump-starting entrepreneurship at the Agricultural University of Athens, a university that operates in a barren entrepreneurial and industrial landscape. We find that the sincere lack of understanding of commercialization and the ensuing superfluous expectations that faculty scientists developed about its benefits, resulted in congestion at the Technology Commercialization Office, rendering the tech-transfer process inefficient. Nevertheless, educating the faculty about entrepreneurship contributed to moderate but tangible short term results.
The purpose of this paper is to explain with more clarity the factors responsible for
women’s under-representation in the fields of sciences, entrepreneurship, engineering
and technology (SEET), celebrates women’s feats and consequently enhance their
representation in these vital fields. To achieve this, the authors employ a critical
discourse analysis reviewing previous scholarly works on the subject, synchronizing
various opinions and arguments on women’s under-representation. The paper found
that women are indeed under-represented in the fields of SEET because of socialcultural
and institutional factors which tend to view women as economic liabilities
rather than assets, but despite this weakness they have contributed immensely
to scientific development in Nigeria. The paper concludes to enhance women’s
representation there more institutional support is needed from the policymakers and
stakeholders in the education sector for sustainable development.
This study analyzes the factors on the determinants of research productivity. In addition, this study uncovers the relationships between research productivity and various explanatory variables, and between explanatory variables. As for research productivity, 3 indices were used such as the number of papers, patents, and a combination of them. The data is the 3-year average from 2010-2012 by 1,383 researchers from 6 disciplines such as physics, chemistry, biology, mechanical engineering, electricity and electronics, and chemical engineering, reported to the National Research Foundation of Korea. Personal factors such as sex, age, academic rank and location of affiliation show the group difference for productivity. In addition, most resource factors such as the number of graduate students and research funds showed the same result with personal factors. As for the determinants, master and doctoral students and government funds are the most powerful factors for research productivity, but industry funds for patent and overall productivity.
Much of the theoretical and empirical work in the licensing of university inventions has focused on an established …rm as the licensee. In this paper, we establish conditions under which startups will be used instead of established …rms. Given equal royalty rate and …xed fee contracts to startups and established …rms, startups are more likely to be used as the importance of inventor e¤ort rises, diminishing returns to e¤ort for a venture capitalist increase, opportunity cost of …nding an established …rm rises, and opportunity cost of venture capital funding for university inventions falls. We use data from AUTM, National Venture Capital Association, and the National Research Council to show that inventor quality and search costs a¤ect startup formation, consistent with theory.
Long confined to the realm of feminist studies, issues pertaining to women’s access, participation, advancement and reward are rising to prominence in innovation, technology and entrepreneurship - areas traditionally characterised either by gender-blindness or strong male dominance. The implications of this shift are wide-ranging but the mechanisms by which it takes place are little known. We discuss causes of the relatively small numbers of women scientists, researchers, innovators or entrepreneurs, the exceedingly slow pace of transition from inequality to equality and the usually lower hierarchical positions than men’s in academia or business, women’s hidden roles in technological change and an exemplary instance of women’s leading role in a major technological innovation with wide social impact, in the context of major changes arising in the transition from the Industrial to the Knowledge Society.
Universities have long been involved in knowledge transfer activities and are increasing their efforts to collaborate with industry. However, universities vary enormously in the extent to which they promote, and succeed in commercializing, academic research. In this paper, we focus on the concept of cognitive distance, intended as differences in the sets of basic values, norms and mental models in universities and firms. We assess the impact of cognitive distance on university-industry collaborations. Based on original data from interviews with 197 university departments in Italy, our analysis determines whether cognitive distance is perceived as a barrier to university-industry interactions, and estimates its effects on the frequency of their collaborations. Our results confirm that cognitive, albeit not affecting the probability of departments to collaborate with firms, significantly hinders the frequency of interactions.
This paper provides evidence that university-industry collaboration is important for turning commercial opportunities into patents. The results suggest that researchers who receive a large share of research grants from industry have a higher propensity to file a patent. Small dissemination grants generally exert a positive effect, whether they come from industry or not. It also finds that these interactions do not increase the number of industry owned patents alone but benefit universities’ commercialisation efforts in general.
We study the impact of university-industry research collaborations on academic output, in terms of productivity and direction of research. We report findings from a longitudinal dataset on all the researchers from the engineering departments in the UK in the last 20 years. We control for the endogeneity caused by the dynamic nature of research and the existence of reverse causality. Our results indicate that researchers with industrial links publish significantly more. Productivity, though, is higher for low levels of industry involvement. Moreover, growing ties with the industry skew research towards a more applied approach.
Scientific knowledge has characteristics of a pure public good. It is non-rivalrous in the sense that once generated, it is neither depleted nor diminished by use. Knowledge is also non-excludable since, once it is made available, in the absence of clearly defined property rights, users cannot be excluded from using it. These aspects imply that private market mechanisms will not provide adequate incentives for knowledge creation. Legal property rights, such as patents, are one means of dealing with this problem. Patronage in the form of government support for research provides another solution, as does the priority system of awarding credit for scientific discoveries to the first to find them. In the last two decades, there has been a growth in the relative importance of the use of legal property rights in the university setting and with it a growing controversy as to whether the costs may be outweighing the benefits. In this chapter, we discuss issues and evidence with regard to the ownership and licensing of publicly funded research intellectual property rights (IPR). We begin with an overview of incentives created by the patent system and discuss the ways in which these incentives differ from traditional norms of science. We then draw on the legal and economic literatures which distinguish among the incentives to invent, disclose, and innovate, and argue that the rationale for providing IPR for university research stems from the last of these. Finally, we discuss the available evidence on the creation and diffusion of academic research under current IPR regimes.
The article studies the differences in knowledge production between academic researchers. In this perspective, it attempts at first to answer the following question: what factors explain differences in knowledge production between Canadian researchers in natural sciences and engineering? After a presentation of some of the empirical evidence related to this first question, a distinction between two types of academic institutions, entrepreneurial versus non-entrepreneurial universities, is introduced. Drawing from this distinction, four empirical models are suggested to test differences in knowledge production between entrepreneurial and non-entrepreneurial researchers. The results show, first, that funding, time devoted to teaching activities, research team and individual attributes have a similar but differentiated impact on knowledge production of entrepreneurial and non-entrepreneurial researchers. Second, there are some unbalanced effects of the variables co-operation, time devoted to research activities, academic fields and university size on the knowledge production of Canadian researchers on natural science and engineering.
We study collaborative and non-collaborative projects that are supported by government grants. First, we propose a theoretical framework to analyze optimal decisions in these projects. Second, we test our hypotheses with a unique dataset containing academic publications and research funds for all the academics at the major engineering departments in the UK. We find that the type of the project (measured by its level of appliedness) is increasing in the type of both the university and firm partners. Also, the quality of the project (number and impact of the publications) increases with the quality of the researcher and firm, and with the affinity in the partners’ preferences. The collaboration with firms increases the quality of the project only when the firms’ characteristics make them valuable partners.
This paper studies the impact of university-industry collaboration on academic out-put, in terms of productivity and direction of research. We report findings from a unique longitudinal dataset on all the researchers at all the engineering departments of 40 major universities in the UK for the last 20 years. We introduce a new measure of industry collaboration using collaborative and non-collaborative research that provides a continuous and continued assessment of the level of interaction with industry. Our results show that researchers with no industry interaction are less productive than those with a small degree of collaboration. High levels of interaction, however, negatively affect research productivity. A small degree of industry collaboration increases the production of applied research in particular but does not significantly affect the production of basic research.
For much of the past century, universities and university-based researchers have played a critical role in driving technological progress, from the fortification of Vitamin D in the 1920s to the creation of Google in the 1990s. In the process, universities have been a strong catalyst for U.S. economic growth. But a perennial challenge related to university-driven innovation has been ensuring that university structures help - not hinder - innovation and the commercialization of innovations. Multiple pathways for university transfer exist and can be codified to provide broader access to innovation, allow a greater volume of deal flow, support standardization, and decrease the redundancy of innovation and the cycle time for commercialization. The proposed changes focus on creating incentives that will maximize social benefit from the existing investments being made in R&D and commercialization on university campuses.
We exploit a unique database on research and invention disclosure of faculty at 11 major US universities over a period of 17 years to explore the extent to which faculty involvement in license activity has affected their research profiles. We relate faculty disclosures to their industry and government-sponsored research, publications, and citations. Recent disclosure by faculty has a positive effect on industry and government funding, but, if they disclose multiple times, the effect on government funding can be negative. Recent and repeated disclosures increase the faculty member's publication count as well as the importance of these publications in terms of citations. We also examine life-cycle effects and find that the ability to attract funding and the rate of publication increase as the faculty member ages but at a decreasing rate. We also find that post-tenure, both types of funding decrease.
Recently, questions about gender gaps in science have extended to academic technology transfer. Using systematic data on US
medical school faculty, we capture both behavior and performance, examining the hypothesis that women are less likely than
men to commercialize their research findings. We pooled faculty invention data from ten departments in three Academic Health
Centers from 1991 to 1998—a period when patenting had become prevalent and other researchers note that a gender gap was pronounced.
Rather than focusing on patenting, we capture the first step in the commercialization process, as well as the subsequent successful
licensing of faculty inventions to a company. We find no significant gender differences in the likelihood of reporting inventions
or successfully commercializing them. We do find differences in the number of inventions reported, however, with women disclosing
fewer inventions than their male counterparts. Our results demonstrate that gender effects are highly conditioned by employment
context and resources. We attribute differences in our findings with regards to gender to the use of outcome measures that
capture both behavior and performance, and the inclusion of a more extensive set of control variables.
KeywordsUniversity technology transfer–Academic entrepreneurship, university performance metrics–Gender–Biomedicine–Life sciences–Biomedical innovation
Do financial returns to licensing divert faculty from basic research? In a life cycle model in which faculty can conduct basic and/or applied research (the latter can be licensed) licensing increases applied relative to basic effort. However, leisure falls so basic research need not suffer. If applied effort also leads to publishable output, then research output and stock of knowledge are higher with licensing than without. In a tenure system licensing has a positive effect on research output unless license incentives are high. Overall results suggest a positive impact of tenure on research output over the life cycle.
Based on new data, this paper studies the invention disclosure, licensing, and spin-off activities of Max Planck Institute directors over the time period 1985–2004, analyzing their effects on the scientists’ subsequent publication and citation records. Consistent with prior findings, inventing does not adversely affect research output. Mixed results are obtained with regard to commercialization activities. The analysis suggests qualifications to earlier explanations of positive relationships between inventing and publishing.
On 12 December 1980, in the waning days of the lame duck session of the 96th Congress, the U.S. Senate passed the University and Small Business Patent Procedures Act, now known as the Bayh-Dole Act, a seemingly obscure act that allowed universities to claim title to inventions that had been made with federal funding. It is unlikely that many present that day realized what a dramatic impact that act would have. Data clearly show that it played a critical role in rejuvenating the entire U.S. economic system, transforming it from a manufacturing base to an innovation base. Yet ironically, the act has passionate critics.
This paper develops theoretical standpoints to investigate and analyse university inventors and patenting activities. Although the studies on academic entrepreneurship and university patenting have substantially increased, first there have not been enough studies on individual inventors and second the current theoretical studies are not eclectic enough to capture the different factors that may explain university inventors patenting activities. The framework described here addresses this need. To accomplish this we inductively derive several factors from a substantial number of studies on university patenting and entrepreneurship, and develop these factors into a tentative framework. It is our hope that this framework is useful in future empirical research on university patenting and provides a point of departure for scientists.
Since the Bayh-Dole Act of 1980, the commercialization of ideas generated in academia has driven significant startup activity and expansion in the life sciences. This commercial transformation has been shown by others to be concentrated among a relatively small number of elite academic institutions. However, within these institutions, we find that a small number of prestigious scientists are disproportionately responsible for entrepreneurial and commercial activity. To date, limited research has been conducted which aims to understand the characteristics of such serial scientist-entrepreneurs or their significance in early commercial ventures. This study identifies and characterizes 18 serial scientist-entrepreneurs (defined as faculty who have founded or served on the board of directors of 3 or more startups) on the basis of academic impact, patenting, and social network centrality, as compared to their first-time entrepreneur (i.e., faculty who founded or directed 1-2 companies) and noncommercial peers. These individuals constitute a subset of 66 scientist-entrepreneurs from a population of the 493 scientists who served as faculty in life sciences-related departments at MIT, during the period of 1981 to 2005 (representing the primary commercialization period for biotechnology). (cont.) The thesis highlights three key findings. First, the subset of 18 serial scientist-entrepreneurs founded or directed two-thirds of all startup ventures associated with the entire population thus underscoring the significant "skew" in commercial activities. Furthermore, empirical analyses revealed that these serial scientist-entrepreneurs had significantly higher academic impact (i.e., "academic prestige"), as measured by citations to their work, as compared to first-time entrepreneurs and noncommercial scientists. Perhaps not surprisingly, they also had significantly higher numbers of issued U.S. patents, compared to first-time entrepreneurs. Second, the serial scientist-entrepreneurs developed robust relationships with a small group of venture capital investors, who have repeatedly funded their companies. Several of these serial scientist-entrepreneurs retained central positions in the social network of faculty entrepreneurs, potentially brokering and accelerating entrepreneurial activity, including scientific advisory board membership, within the community. These findings suggest that serial scientist-entrepreneurs play a vital role in contributing reputation, deep technical insight, access to intellectual property, and relationship networks to startup life sciences ventures. (cont.) It remains for additional research to determine whether the active involvement of serial scientist-entrepreneurs has resulted in enhanced startup value or performance. Thesis (S.M.)--Harvard-MIT Division of Health Sciences and Technology, 2006. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 37-40).
We use the Survey of Doctorate Recipients to examine the question of who in US universities is patenting. Because standard methods of estimation are not directly applicable, we use a zero-inflated negative binomial model to estimate the patent equation, using instruments for the number of articles to avoid problems of endogeneity. We also estimate the patent model using the generalized method of moments estimation of count data models with endogenous regressors. We find work context and field to be important predictors of the number of patent applications. We also find patents to be positively and significantly related to the number of publications. This finding is robust to the choice of instruments and method of estimation. The cross-sectional nature of the data preclude an examination of whether a trade-off exists between publishing and patenting, holding individual characteristics constant over time. But the strong cross-sectional correlation that we find does not suggest that commercialization has come at the expense of placing knowledge in the public domain.
This article presents an empirical study on the patenting activities of the faculty members of the University Louis Pasteur, a major French research university. Our findings suggest that publishing and patenting are positively related whereas academic status and patenting are not, and that university researchers are more likely to patent later in their careers. With regard to research organization, we find positive effects of the laboratory's size, of the amount of contractual funds collected by the lab and of the share these funds received from private sources.
Licensing of university inventions to industry has experienced rapid, recent growth. This growth is cited as evidence of university success in technology transfer and it suggests an increasing importance of universities to innovation systems. Concerns have been raised that universities are moving towards applied research and away from fundamental research in efforts to capture licensing income. However, figures on growth in licensing perhaps paint a misleading picture, given the substantial variation in licensing success across universities, scientific fields, and technologies. The paper is organized around the following questions. What is the rationale behind university patenting and licensing? How embryonic are university inventions and how often is further development necessary? What is the record on exclusive versus non-exclusive licensing? What is the record on licensing revenue? What are university licensing goals? What is the role of faculty after a licence is signed? Have faculty been diverted from their traditional role in research?
Understanding the nature of the involvement of faculty in university licensing is important for understanding how technology is transferred through licensing as well as more controversial issues, such as the need for university licensing. Using data from a survey of firms that actively license in from universities, the authors explore the importance of faculty in the licensing and development of inventions, as well as how and why they are used and how the use of faculty relates to characteristics of firms. In particular, the authors find that the use of faculty through sponsored research in lieu of a license is closely related to the amount of basic research conducted by firms, whereas the use of faculty within the terms of a license is related to the prevalence of personal contacts between industry research and development researchers and university faculty. (JEL J44, 031) Copyright 2004, Oxford University Press.
In this paper we extend our earlier work on science and engineering faculty disclosure and licensing activity to examine a characteristic of faculty ignored in our earlier work – the gender of faculty in our database of over 4500 faculty at 11 major universities. Not surprisingly, women comprise only 8.55% of the faculty in our sample. They are most represented in the biological sciences and the women in the sample are more likely to be younger faculty. The most striking result from highlighting women in the sample is that women are less likely to disclose inventions than men despite the fact that there are no significant differences in publication patterns. While disclosure activity varies by gender, we find that the disclosure activity of women and men converges over the period of our sample. Copyright Springer Science+Business Media, Inc. 2005
This paper develops theoretical standpoints to investigate and analyse university inventors and patenting activities. Although the studies on academic entrepreneurship and university patenting have substantially increased, first there have not been enough studies on individual inventors and second the current theoretical studies are not eclectic enough to capture the different factors that may explain university inventors patenting activities. The framework described here addresses this need. To accomplish this we inductively derive several factors from a substantial number of studies on university patenting and entrepreneurship, and develop these factors into a tentative framework. It is our hope that this framework is useful in future empirical research on university patenting and provides a point of departure for scientists.
ABSTRACT : This paper looks at how well Finland performs in high growth entrepreneurship and uses data from the Global Entrepreneurship monitor to benchmark Finland against other European countries. It is found that Finland’s prevalence rate of high growth entrepreneurial activity lags significantly behind most of its European and all of its Scandinavian peers. That this weak performance in high-growth entrepreneurship goes hand in hand with Finland being a world leader in per capita investment in R&D may be described as a paradox. The reasons underlying the underperformance of Finland remain however unclear. At this point, explanations should be sought in culture, industrial traditions and systemic experience in high growth entrepreneurship.
This chapter examines the contributions that economists have made to the study of science and the types of contributions the profession is positioned to make in the future. Special emphasis is placed on the public nature of knowledge and characteristics of the reward structure that encourage the production and sharing of knowledge. The role that cognitive and noncognitive resources play in discovery is discussed as well as the costs of resources used in research. Different models for the funding of research are presented. The chapter also discusses scientific labor markets and the extreme difficulty encountered in forecasting the demand for and supply of scientists. The chapter closes with a discussion of the relationship of scientific research to economic growth and suggestions for future research.
Many studies have shown that academic research has real effects, but there is virtually no empirical evidence of whether, and how, economic incentives affect university scientific research. This paper studies how economic incentives affect university research and licensing outcomes. Using panel data on inventions, license income, scientists'royalty shares for 103 U.S. universities, we examine how the cash flow rights from university inventions affect the quantity and value of university inventions. Controlling for other determinants, including university size, quality and research funding, we find that universities with higher royalty shares produce fewer inventions with higher average value. Overall, total income from licensing university inventions increases with the royalty share. These incentive effects are much stronger in private than in public, universities. We interpret the differential effect of economic incentives on the number and quality of inventions in terms of a 'research congestion effect' and develop a simple model that operationalizes this idea.
Proponents of the Bayh-Dole Act argue that unless universities have the right to license patentable inventions, many results from federally funded research would never be transferred to industry. Our survey of U.S. research universities supports this view. Results point to the embryonic state of most technologies licensed and the need for inventor cooperation in the commercialization process. Thus, for most university inventions, there is a moral hazard problem with regard to inventor effort. Our theoretical analysis shows that for such inventions, development would not occur unless the inventor's income is tied to the licensee's output by payments such as royalties or equity. Sponsored research can also be critical to commercialization, but it alone does not solve the inventor's moral hazard problem.
The relationship between age and the publishing productivity of Ph.D. scientists is analyzed using data from the Survey of Doctorate Recipients (National Research Council) and the Science Citation Index. The longitudinal nature of the data allows for the identification of pure aging effects. In five of the six areas studied, life-cycle aging effects are present. Only in particle physics, where scientists often speak of being on a "religious quest," is the indication that scientific productivity is not investment-motivated. Vintage effects are also considered. The expectation that the latest educated are the most productive is not generally supported by the data. Copyright 1991 by American Economic Association.
Doctoral education, a key component of higher education in the United States, is performing well. It educates future professors, researchers, innovators, and entrepreneurs. It attracts students and scholars from all over the world and is being emulated globally. This success, however, should not engender complacency. A Data-Based Assessment of Research-Doctorate Programs in the United States provides an unparalleled dataset that can be used to assess the quality and effectiveness of doctoral programs based on measures important to faculty, students, administrators, funders, and other stakeholders. This report features analysis of selected findings across six broad fields: agricultural sciences, biological and health sciences, engineering, physical and mathematical sciences, social and behavioral sciences, and humanities, as well as a discussion of trends in doctoral education since the last assessment in 1995, and suggested uses of the data. It also includes a detailed explanation of the methodology used to collect data and calculate ranges of illustrative rankings. © 2010 by the National Academy of Sciences. All rights reserved.
This article attempts to improve our understanding of the university–firm technology transfer process in several ways. First, a model of technology transfer which subdivides this complicated activity into several small and more readily understandable dimensions is developed. Next, questions relevant to each dimension from the perspective of both the university administrator and the university researcher are asked. Answers to the questions explored are drawn from results of a survey of administrators and researchers associated with the top 100 US research universities.
This paper is an attempt to quantify key aspects of innovations, 'basicness' and appropriability, and explore the linkages between them. We rely on detailed patent data. particularly on patent citations, thus awarding the proposed measures a very wide coverage. Relying on the prior that universities perform more basic research than corporations, we find that forward-looking measures of 'importance' and 'generality' capture aspects of the basicness of innovations. Similarly, measures of the degree of reliance on scientific sources. and of the closeness to the origins of innovational paths, appear to reflect the basicness of research. As measures of appropriability we use the fraction of citations coming from patents awarded to the sarne inventor, and in fact these measures are much higher for corporations than fbr universities. An examination of a small number of patents that are universally recognized as 'basic' provides further support for these measures. We find also evidence of the existence of 'technologl trajectories'.
Over the past decade there has been an intensification of interest in how universities can play a more effective role in promoting technical advance in American industry. However, very little of the current discussion is solidly based on an informed analysis of the roles that universities actually play today or the historical circumstances that caused universities to assume these roles.This paper offers an analysis, both historical and contemporary, that identifies the distinctive strengths, as well as limitations, of university research. Regarding the strengths, most of university research is basic research in the sense that it aims to understand phenomena at a relatively fundamental level. However, this does not mean that such research is uninfluenced by the pull of important technological problems and objectives. The lion's share of university research is in the engineering disciplines and applied sciences such as computer science and oncology which, by their nature, are oriented toward problem-solving. Despite its obvious usefulness, industry does very little of such basic research because the payoffs are of a long-run nature as well as difficult to appropriate. The vast bulk of industry R&D is focused directly on shorter term problem-solving, design and development. Universities are not particularly good at this sort of work. Industry is more effective in dealing with problems that are located close to the market place.This paper argues that new policies will need to respect this division of labor.
Growth during the 1980s and 1990s in patenting and licensing by American universities is frequently asserted to be a direct consequence of the Bayh–Dole Act of 1980. However, there has been little empirical analysis of the effects of this legislation. This paper uses previously unexploited data to consider the effects of Bayh–Dole at three leading universities: the University of California, Stanford University, and Columbia University. Two of these universities (California and Stanford) were active in patenting and licensing before Bayh–Dole, and one (Columbia) became active only after its passage. The evidence suggests that Bayh–Dole was only one of several important factors behind the rise of university patenting and licensing activity. Bayh–Dole also appears to have had little effect on the content of academic research at these universities. A comparison of these three universities reveals remarkable similarities in their patent and licensing portfolios 10 years after the passage of the Bayh–Dole Act. The concluding section raises several questions about the effects of Bayh–Dole and related policy shifts that are not addressed by this analysis but that deserve attention in future research.
The question of exactly how science is commercialized is an important one. While the social structures of “science” and “technology” are distinctive, recent work suggests that scientific and technological ideas in fact co-evolve. This paper addresses the dynamics of such co-evolution: are scientific networks deeply co-mingled with networks through which technology is created and if so how? It does so in a study of an emerging area of biomedicine—tissue engineering. The research is based on a novel methodology that takes advantage of the fact that an idea is often inscribed in both a patent and paper, thus forming a patent–paper pair. Starting with the pair, it is possible to trace the citation network of patents, papers, inventors and authors, combining traditional bibliometric analysis with in-depth interviews to provide new insights. The results show that for this case there exist distinctive scientific and technological networks. Furthermore, while there is evidence of overlap, it is neither co-publishing nor citation as might be predicted from current literature. Rather co-mingling exists through founding, licensing, consulting and advising. This has implications for our understanding of the processes through which spillovers arise, the way in which commercialization and technology transfer should be structured and for recent debates on conflict of interest in biomedicine.
This paper develops new indicators of accumulated academic science and tests their explanatory power on productivity data from manufacturing industries. Knowledge is found to be a major contributor to productivity growth. Furthermore, a lag in effect of roughly 20 years is found between the appearance of research in the academic cmmunity and its effect on productivity in the form of knowledge absorbed by an industry. Academic technology and academic science filtered through interindustry spillovers exhibit lags of roughly 10 and 30 years each. Thus implied search and gestation times far exceed developmental periods in the studies of R&D. A clear implication is that basic research declines relative to development in the face of an exogenous rise in the real rate of interest. Copyright 1990 by University of Chicago Press.
Using detailed data on California biotechnology, the authors find that the positive impact of research universities on nearby firms relates to identifiable market exchange between particular university star scientists and firms and not to generalized knowledge spillovers. Poisson and two-stage Beckman regressions indicate the number of star-firm collaborations powerfully predicts success: for an average firm, five articles coauthored by academic stars and the firm's scientists imply about five more products in development, 3.5 more products on the market, and 860 more employees. Stars collaborating with or employed by firms, or who patent, have significantly higher citation rates than pure academic stars. Copyright 1998 by Oxford University Press.
Historically, commercial use of university research has been viewed in terms of spillovers. Recently, there has been a dramatic increase in technology transfer through licensing as universities attempt to appropriate the returns from faculty research. This change has prompted concerns regarding the source of this growth - specifically, whether it suggests a change in the nature of university research. We develop an intermediate input model to examine the extent to which the growth in licensing is due to the productivity observable inputs or driven by a change in the propensity of faculty and administrators to engage in commercializing university research. We model licensing as a three stage process, each involving multiple inputs. Nonparametric programming techniques are applied to survey data from 65 universities to calculate total factor productivity (TFP) growth in each state. To examine the sources of TFP growth, the productivity analysis is augmented by survey evidence from business who license-in university inventions. Results suggest that increased licensing is due primarily to an increased willingness of faculty and administrators to license and increased business reliance on external R&D rather than a shift in faculty research.
This paper evaluates the relationship between wages and the scientific orientation of R&D organizations. Science-oriented firms allow researchers to publish in the scientific literature and pursue individual research agendas. Adoption of a Science- oriented research approach (i.e., Science) is driven by two distinct forces: a (a Preference effect) and R&D productivity gains arising from earlier access to discoveries (a Productivity effect). The equilibrium relationship between wages and Science reflects the relative salience of these effects: the Preference effect contributes to a negative compensating differential while the Productivity effect raises the possibility of rent-sharing between firms and researchers. In addition, because the value of participating in Science is increasing in the prestige of researchers, Science tends to be adopted by those firms who employ higher-quality researchers. This structural relationship between the adoption of Science and unobserved heterogeneity in researcher ability leads to bias in the context of hedonic wage and productivity regressions which do not account for such effects. This paper exploits a novel field-based empirical approach to substantially overcome this bias. Specifically, prior to accepting a specific job offer, many scientists receive multiple job offers, making it possible to calculate the wage- Science curve for individual scientists, controlling for ability level. The methodology is applied to a sample of postdoctoral biologists. The results suggest a strong negative relationship between wages and Science. For example, firms who allow their employees to publish extract, on average, a 25% wage discount. The results are robust to restricting the sample to non-academic job offers, but the findings depend critically on the inclusion of the researcher fixed effects. The paper's conclusion, then, is that, conditional on scientific ability, scientists do indeed pay to be scientists.
This paper examines the evolving relationship in science between the reward structure and entrepreneurial activity. We draw a distinction between two types of property rights. Basic science is fostered by a mechanism of reputational rights; technological advances-and the products and processes they produce - are fostered by a mechanism of proprietary rights. The two forms of property rights differ markedly in terms of the incentives they provide to share information in a timely fashion. We argue that because of a host of factors university-based scientists in certain fields are more likely to “privatize” knowledge today than in the past, trading reputational rights for proprietary rights. Events in the life sciences serve as a case study. A discussion of how privatization affects basic science follows. Although the evidence is far from complete, we conclude that the movement towards privatization may be more beneficial to product development and the scientists engaged in the activity than to basic science.
We examine the interplay of the three major university actors in technology transfer from universities to industry: the faculty, the technology transfer office (TTO), and the central administration. We model the faculty as an agent of the administration, and the TTO as an agent of both the faculty and the administration. Empirical tests of the theory are based on evidence from our survey of 62 US research universities. We find that the TTOs reported licensing objectives are influenced by their views of faculty and administration, which supports the assumption that the TTO is a dual agent. The theory yields predictions for whether or not faculty disclose inventions and if so, at what stage, which in turn affects license contract terms. We also examine how the portion of inventions disclosed at different stages varies with faculty quality. Quality is found to be inversely related to the share of license income allotted to faculty.
Putting Patents in Context
- A Agrawal
- R Henderson
Agrawal, A. and R. Henderson, 2002, “Putting Patents in Context,” Management Science 48, 44-60
The Academic Effects of Patent Licensing
- R Jensen
- M Thursby
Jensen, R. and M. Thursby, 2003, " The Academic Effects of Patent Licensing, " mimeo.
- J Colyvas
- M Crow
- A Gelijns
- R Mazzoleni
- R Nelson
- N Rosenberg
- B Sampat
Colyvas, J., M. Crow, A. Gelijns, R. Mazzoleni, R. Nelson, N. Rosenberg and B. Sampat, 2002. " How Do
University Inventions Get Into Practice, " Management Science 48, 61-72.
- F Narin
- G Pinski
- H Gee
Narin, F., G. Pinski, H. Gee, 1976, " Structure of the Biomedical Literature, " Journal of the American Society for Information Science, 25-45.
- L Zucker
- M Darby
- M Brewer
Zucker, L., M. Darby and M. Brewer, 1998, " Intellectual Capital and the Birth of U.S. Biotechnology Enterprises, " American Economic Review, 88, pp. 290-306.
<1960
16.14
5.23
12.49
1960 -1970
25.74
5.81
22.12
1970 -1980
36.28
7.90
42.37
1980 -1990
20.89
7.21
22.29
1990 -1999
0.95
5.23
0.73
- R Morgan
- N Kannankutty
- D Strickland
Morgan, R., N. Kannankutty, and D. Strickland, 1997, " Future Directions for University –Based Engineering Research, ASEE PRISM 6 (7), 33-36.
Today's Industry/University Licensing Environment: Issues and Problems as Reported by Participants
- J Thursby
- M Thursby
Thursby, J. and M. Thursby, 2000, " Today's Industry/University Licensing Environment: Issues and
Problems as Reported by Participants, " paper presented at the Licensing Executive Society (U.S.A. &
Canada), New York, May 2000.
The Scientific Community
- W Hagstrom
Hagstrom, W., 1965, The Scientific Community (New York: Basic Books).
Patenting and Publishing: Substitutes or Complements For University Faculty
- Paula Stephan
- Shiferaw Gurmu
- A J Sumell
- Grant Black
Stephan, Paula, Shiferaw Gurmu, A.J. Sumell and Grant Black (2003) " Patenting and Publishing: Substitutes or Complements For University Faculty, " mimeo.
- J Thursby
- R Jensen
- M Thursby
Thursby, J., R. Jensen and M. Thursby, 2001, " Objectives, Characteristics and Outcomes of University
Licensing: A Survey of Major U.S. Universities, " Journal of Technology Transfer, 59-72.
Has Patent Licensing Changed Academic Research? " mimeo
- J Thursby
- M Thursby
Thursby, J. and M. Thursby, 2001, " Has Patent Licensing Changed Academic Research? " mimeo.