Assessing the Impact of Organizational Practices on the Productivity of University Technology Transfer Offices: An Exploratory Study

We present quantitative and qualitative evidence (field research) on university technology transfer offices (TTOs). These offices negotiate licensing agreements with firms to commercialize university-based technologies. A stochastic frontier production function framework is used to assess the relative productivity of 113 university TTOs. Our field research provided a useful reality check on the specification of the econometric model. The empirical findings imply that licensing activity is characterized by constant returns to scale. Environmental and institutional factors appear to explain some of the variation in TTO efficiency. Relative productivity may also depend on organizational practices in university management of intellectual property, which potentially attenuate palpable differences in the motives, incentives, and organizational cultures of the parties to licensing agreements. Unfortunately, there are no existing data on such practices, so we rely on inductive, qualitative methods to identify them. We present detailed information on our use of these methods. This information may be useful to economists who are contemplating fieldwork. Based on 55 interviews of managers/entrepreneurs and administrators at five research universities, we conclude that the most critical organizational factors are likely to be reward systems for faculty, TTO staffing and compensation practices, and actions taken by administrators to extirpate informational and cultural barriers between universities and firms.

Universities as Research Partners

Universities are a key institution in the US innovation system and an important aspect of their involvement is the role they play in Private-Public Partnering activities. This study seeks to gain a better understanding of the performance of university-industry research partnerships using a sample survey of pre-commercial research projects funded the U.S. government's Advanced Technology Program. Although results must be interpreted cautiously due to the small size of the sample, the study finds that projects with university involvement tend to be in areas involving "new" science and therefore experience more difficulty and delay but also are more likely not to be aborted prematurely. We interpret this finding to imply that universities are contributing to basic research awareness and insight among the partners in ATP-funded projects.university; research

Creativity and the Family Tree: Human Capital Endowments and the Propensity of Entrepreneurs to Patent

In this paper we show that the patenting behavior of creative entrepreneurs is correlated with the patenting behavior of their fathers, which we refer to as a source of the entrepreneurs' human capital endowments. Our argument for this relationship follows from established theories of developmental creativity, and our empirical analysis is based on survey data collected from MIT's Technology Review winners.patents, entrepreneurship, human capital endowments

An Empirical Analysis of the Propensity of Academics to Engage in Informal University Technology Transfer

Formal university technology transfer mechanisms, through licensing agreements, research joint ventures, and university-based startups, have attracted considerable attention in the academic literature. Surprisingly, there has been little systematic empirical analysis of the propensity of academics to engage in informal technology transfer. This paper presents empirical evidence on the determinants of three types of informal technology transfer by faculty members: knowledge transfer, joint publications with industry scientists, and consulting. We find that male and tenured faculty members are more likely to engage in all three forms of informal technology transfer. We also find that academics who allocate a relatively higher percentage of their time to grants-related research are more likely to engage in informal commercial knowledge transfer.

Fostering University-Industry R&D Collaborations in European Union Countries

This paper advances our understanding of university-industry research and development (R&D) collaborations. These strategic relationships are a dimension of entrepreneurial activity, and they are thus important drivers of economic growth and development. Business collaboration with universities increases the efficiency and effectiveness of industrial investments. Previous studies have found that universities are more likely to collaborate with industry if the business is mature and large, is engaged in exploratory internal R&D, and there are not major intellectual property (IP) issues between both parties. Businesses gain from such collaborations through increased commercialisation probabilities and economies of technological scope. Based on publicly available data collected by the Science-to-Business Marketing Research Centre of Germany as part of a European Commission project, our paper focuses on two key questions. First, why are there cross-country differences in the extent to which universities collaborate with business in R&D? Second, are there covariates with these differences that might offer insight into policy prescriptions and policy levers for enhancing the extent to which such collaboration takes place? We find that access is positive and statistically significant in relation to fostering university-business R&D collaborations. Our results, albeit that they are tempered by a small sample of data, have implications how national innovation systems support further harmonization of IP regimes across universities and how universities prioritise their own investments and incentives

An Econometric Analysis of Trends in Research Joint Venture Activity.

Edith Penrose was one of the first scholars to point out that firms may need to rely on research joint ventures (RJVs) to acquire access to resources that can help them achieve and sustain a competitive advantage. We estimate an econometric model of the propensity of firms to disclose their intension to engage in RJVs, in order to explain the recent precipitous decline in RJVs filed with the U.S. Department of Justice. We find that RJV activity is inversely related to the competitive position of U.S. firms in global high-technology industries and that the establishment of the U.S. Commerce Department's Advanced Technology Program (ATP) induced a structural change in the propensity of firms to engage in RJVs. Thus, two factors may explain the recent downturn in RJV filings: a substantial improvement in U.S. global performance in high-technology markets and a sharp decline in ATP funding.

Barriers Inhibiting Industry from Partnering with Universities: Evidence from the Advanced Technology Program

A small sample of 38 Advanced Technology Projects funded between 1993 and 1996 are surveyed to explore the reasons for university non-participation, or, in the cases where they did participate, whether the partnerships encountered any difficulties from their participation. 32 percent report that intellectual property issues were an insurmountable barrier to university participation. Such barriers are more likely when the ATP share of funding is high and when the expected duration of the research is relatively short. They are also somewhat more likely for projects involving chemical technology, and when industrial participants have had previous experience with universities as research partners. These difficulties over IP may arise because the cultures in the two institutional forms differ, or because the original ATP guidelines do not recognize the existence of the Bayh-Dole Act (which grants universities title to inventions made by their employees using outside funding).

Universities as Research Partners

Universities are a key institution in the US innovation system and an important aspect of their involvement is the role they play in Private-Public Partnering activities. This study seeks to gain a better understanding of the performance of university-industry research partnerships using a sample survey of pre-commercial research projects funded the U.S. government's Advanced Technology Program. Although results must be interpreted cautiously due to the small size of the sample, the study finds that projects with university involvement tend to be in areas involving "new" science and therefore experience more difficulty and delay but also are more likely not to be aborted prematurely. We interpret this finding to imply that universities are contributing to basic research awareness and insight among the partners in ATP-funded projects.