Albert N. Link

Commercial knowledge transfers from universities to firms: improving the effectiveness of university-industry collaboration.

There has been a rapid rise in commercial knowledge transfers from universities to practitioners or university–industry technology transfer (UITT), through licensing agreements, research joint ventures, and start-ups. The purpose of this study was to analyze the UITT process and its outcomes. Based on 98 structured interviews of key UITT stakeholders (i.e., university administrators, academic and industry scientists, business managers, and entrepreneurs) at five research universities in two regions of the US, we conclude that these stakeholders have different perspectives on the desired outputs of UITT. More importantly, numerous barriers to effective UITT were identified, including culture clashes, bureaucratic inflexibility, poorly designed reward systems, and ineffective management of university technology transfer offices (TTOs). Based on this qualitative evidence, we provide numerous recommendations for improving the UITT process.

In Search of the Meaning of Entrepreneurship

This paper is an attempt to build a bridge between the popular and the academic usage of the terms entrepreneur and entrepreneurship, and to identify the raw materials needed to construct an interpretive framework capable of illuminating the nature of entrepreneurship and its role in economic theory. We review briefly the contributions made to this topic by Cantillon, Schumpeter, Schultz and Kirzner. We advance a ‘synthetic’ definition of the entrepreneur as someone who specializes in taking responsibility for and making judgemental decisions that affect the location, the form, and the use of goods, resources, or institutions. We then conclude with some observations on the basic choice confronting economics regarding the place of entrepreneurship in economic analysis.

The entrepreneur : mainstream views and radical critiques

The place of the entrepreneur in economics the prehistory of entrepreneurship first steps on a new path a fork in the road dead ends, detours and redirections the entrepreneur resurrected. The entrepreneur partitioned the entrepreneur reconstituted the entrepreneur extended the entrepreneur and the firm past, present and future.

Firm Size, University Based Research, and the Returns to R&D

This paper compares university-based research relationships between small and large firms as an explanation for the difference in innovative activity across firm sizes. We test the hypothesis that there are diseconomies of scale in producing innovations in large firms due to the inherent bureaucratization process which inhibits both innovative activity as well as the speed with which new inventions move through the corporate system towards the market. By utilizing university-based research relationships, small firms are able to avoid bureaucratic inefficiencies.

Are public sector workers more risk averse than private sector workers

Available evidence suggests that stability of employment is greater in the public sector than in the private sector. The value that individuals place on this stability depends on the individuals degree of risk aversion. Economic reasoning suggests that, other things equal, those individuals with a high degree of aversion to risk will be more likely than others to seek employment in the public sector. This paper tests that hypothesis through the use of probit analysis and a measure of risk aversion developed in the University of Michigans Panel Study of Income Dynamics. The results tend to confirm the hypothesis, implying that a policy of intersectoral equality of pay for comparable jobs would result in an excess supply of workers to the public sector.

U.S. science parks: the diffusion of an innovation and its effects on the academic missions of universities.

The paper is an exploratory study of science parks in the United States. It models the history of science parks as the diffusion of an innovation that was adopted at a rapid and increasing rate in the early 1980s, and since then at a decreased rate. It models the growth of a science park once established, showing significant effects on growth for the proximity to universities and other resources. The paper also reports university administrators’ perceptions about the impact of their science parks on the academic missions of their universities. Statistical analyses show there is a direct relationship between the proximity of the science park to the university and the probability that the academic curriculum will shift from basic toward applied research.

The Economics of Science and Technology

This paper provides a non-technical, accessible introduction to various topics in the burgeoning literature on the economics of science and technology. This is an interdisciplinary literature, drawing on the work of scholars in the fields of economics, public policy, sociology and management. The aim of this paper is to foster a deeper appreciation of the economic importance of science and technology issues. We also hope to stimulate additional research on these topics.

Generating science-based growth: an econometric analysis of the impact of organizational incentives on university-industry technology transfer.

In recent years, there has been a rapid rise in commercial knowledge transfers from universities to practitioners or university/industry technology transfer (UITT), via licensing agreements, research joint ventures, and startups. In a previous study in 1999, the authors outlined a production function model to assess the relative efficiency of UITT and conducted field research to identify several organizational factors that could enhance the effectiveness of university management of intellectual property portfolios. This paper extends this framework and evaluates the impact of organizational incentives on the effectiveness of UITT. It is found that universities having more attractive incentive structures for UITT, i.e. those that allocate a higher %age of royalty payments to faculty members, tend to be more efficient in technology transfer activities. University administrators who wish to foster UITT should be mindful of the importance of financial incentives.

Public/private technology partnerships: evaluating SBIR-supported research ☆

Abstract This paper evaluates public support of private-sector research and development (R&D) through the Department of Defense’s (DoD’s), Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Program. Based on alternative evaluation methods applicable to survey data and case studies, we conclude that there is ample evidence that the DoD’s SBIR Program is stimulating R&D as well as efforts to commercialize that would not otherwise have taken place. Further, the evidence shows the SBIR R&D does lead to commercialization, and the net social benefits associated with the program’s sponsored research are substantial.

An Analysis of the Composition of R&D. Spending.

Research and development encompasses a myriad of activities. Generally, research is the primary search for technical or scientific advancement, and development is the translation of such advancement into product of process innovations. The National Science Foundation has fostered an even finer breakdown: basic research, applied research and development. In practice, however, R&D is more heterogeneous than these labels imply. The research fields associated with basic research include areas in both the physical and biological sciences. Applied research and development projects relate to product groups as diverse as all the activities in the industrial sector. Nevertheless, most previous empirical studies of the microeconomic aspects of R&D have treated R&D spending as a single, homogeneous activity. Consequently, a generally acceptable set of variables has developed for explaining inter-firm levels of R&D spending, but virtually nothing is known about the determinants of the inter-firm composition of R&D.