Patenting rationales of academic entrepreneurs in weak and strong organizational regimes

This study explores why academic entrepreneurs seek patents for spin-off technology in weak organizational regimes (the employee owns her inventions) and strong organizational regimes (the employer, i.e. the university or research organization, owns these inventions). Specifically, we examine organizational and founding team characteristics as alternative explanations. Matched data of academic spin-offs from both contexts combined with patent data show that founding team characteristics (expert knowledge and entrepreneurial orientation) matter in weak, but not strong regimes. In contrast, organizational patenting norms are the key driver of patenting in strong, but not weak regimes. We discuss the implications of our results for the current literature and technology transfer policies

Analyzing the Effectiveness of University Technology Transfer: Implications for Entrepreneurship Education

We review and synthesize the burgeoning literature on institutions and agents engaged in the commercialization of university-based intellectual property. These studies indicate that institutional incentives and organizational practices both play an important role in enhancing the effectiveness of technology transfer. We conclude that university technology transfer should be considered from a strategic perspective. Institutions that choose to stress the entrepreneurial dimension of technology transfer need to address skill deficiencies in technology transfer offices (TTOs), reward systems that are inconsistent with enhanced entrepreneurial activity, and education/training for faculty members, post-docs, and graduate students relating to interactions with entrepreneurs. Business schools at these universities can play a major role in addressing these skill and educational deficiencies, through the delivery of targeted programs to technology licensing officers and members of the campus community wishing to launch startup firms.

Bottom-Up vs. Top-Down Policies towards the Commercialization of University Intellectual Property

What national policies are most efficient in promoting the commercialization of university-generated knowledge? We address this question by characterizing and evaluating the policy pursued in Sweden and the US, two countries that put a great deal of resources into university R&D, but follow very different models for commercialization. Despite a leading academic record, there is an impression of laggard rates of commercialization of academic research results in Sweden. Although there exist no micro data to evaluate this impression, we argue that it is likely to be true in part due to the top-down nature of Swedish policies aimed at commercializing these innovations as well as an academic environment that discourages academics from actively participating in the commercialization of their ideas. This sits in stark contrast to a US institutional setting characterized by competition between universities for research funds and research personnel, which in turn has led to significant academic freedoms to interact with industry, including significant involvement in new firms.Academic entrepreneurship; Innovation; Intellectual property; R&D; Spin-off firms; Technology transfer; University-industry relations; Universities and business formation

Entrepreneurial Spawning: Public Corporations and the Genesis of New Ventures, 1986-1999

This paper examines the factors that lead to the creation of venture capital backed start-ups, a process we term entrepreneurial spawning.' We contrast two alternative views of the spawning process. In one view, employees of established firms are trained and conditioned to be entrepreneurs by being exposed to the entrepreneurial process and by working in a network of entrepreneurs and venture capitalists. Alternatively, individuals become entrepreneurs because the large bureaucratic companies for which they work are reluctant to fund their entrepreneurial ideas. Controlling for a firm's size, patent portfolio and industry, we find that the most prolific spawning firms were public companies located in Silicon Valley and Massachusetts that were themselves once venture capital backed. Less diversified firms are also more likely to spawn new firms. Spawning levels for these firms rise as their sales growth declines. Firms based in Silicon Valley and Massachusetts and originally backed by venture capitalists are more likely to spawn firms only peripherally related to their core businesses. Overall, these findings appear to be more consistent with the view that entrepreneurial learning and networks are important factors in the creation of venture capital backed firms.

How academic entrepreneurship meets the university: university spin-offs in stakeholder networks

Some universities and departments have been very successful in stimulating university spin-off firms (USOs). It remains an open question whether this is due to unique abilities and circumstances or if it can be stimulated at many universities. This paper seeks to discuss this question by integrating insights from two separate literatures: academic entrepreneurship and university management. We start by taking the firm’s perspective to understand the challenges faced by USOs and how universities can assist these firms in developing their entrepreneurial competencies. After that we explore why universities might choose to use their scarce resources to support USOs when the main benefits for success are accrued by the spin-off rather than the university. Here we use a stakeholder perspective to suggest how academic entrepreneurship may be seen as universities’ developing service bundles to support an entrepreneurial ecosystem that goes beyond technical and financial support. We suggest a future research and policy agenda arguing for more emphasis on understanding the USO as a university stakeholder, with relationships to a wider stakeholder set, that in turn constitute an entrepreneurial ecosystem

Between entrepreneurship and technology transfer: Evaluation of the FORNY programme

This report is the result of an evaluation of the FORNY programme commissioned by the Re-search Council of Norway. The background for the evaluation is that the current programme period will be terminated by the end of 2009, and the results of the evaluation will be an im-portant basis for designing the future programme

High Technology Commercialisation: A Real Option Approach

The impact of uncertainty in the commercialization lifecycle of new technologies is a complex phenomenon. Technologies are research intensive and exposed to uncertainty regarding their successful development and functionality. Further these technologies have to be absorbed by volatile markets in order to be commercialized. These different forms of uncertainty are of primary importance for decision makers but have not been thoroughly studied in previous technology commercialization research and put under one theoretical framework. The main focus of this thesis is to comprehend the recently growing trend among universities and public research organizations to commercialize their research activities from an empirical and theoretical perspective. More particularly the thesis focuses on the life cycle of two main commercialization streams namely the entry and exit of university spinouts, which are companies that evolve from intellectual property developed within academic institutions as well as the licensing and licensing termination of inventions. The main focus of the thesis therefore analysesmarket and technological uncertainty and explains the conditions under which spinout formation, spinout failure, licensing and licensing failure occur by putting them under the theoretical framework of real option theory

Not Quite up to Scratch: An Examination of Failure, Persistence, and ‘Living Dead’ Outcomes for Wireless Start-Ups

This dissertation analyzes why some VC-funded high-tech firms do not generate harvesting events for investors through a lucrative sale, either to another company or on the stock exchange. I investigate the effects of three signals of quality on failure and persistence. In the first essay, hypotheses are developed on the unintended consequences of patenting. Disclosure, through patents, exposes new firms to undesired spillovers. The second essay exploits asymmetric effects on success and failure to expose start-up persistence. It analyzes another signal of quality—technology breadth, the applicability across domains—and suggests that hazards of disclosure also varies with this breadth. Finally, the third essay examines the effects of signals related to founding team on a third outcome, ‘living dead’—a transitory state to which a start-up shifts when it persists beyond the norm without harvest or failure. I tested these hypotheses on a longitudinal dataset of 428 US VC-backed wireless firms founded between 1990 and 2009 using event history analysis and matched case-control study. I find that a start-up’s failure rate increases as its inventions are cited at a higher rate by others; in addition failure rate increases when the citing firms have a reputation of litigiousness. I show that the effect of signaling a specific technology while experiencing high rate of knowledge diffusion diminishes both the likelihood of failure and success—uncovering persistence. Loss of members in founding teams comprised of entrepreneurs with prior founding experience is found to be a shock that increases the odds of marginal performance