Irwin Feller

Equity and the Technology Transfer Strategies of American Research Universities

American universities are experimenting with new mechanisms for promoting the commercialization of academic research and generating revenue from university intellectual property. This paper discusses mechanisms available to universities in managing the commercialization of intellectual property, considering equity as a technology transfer mechanism that offers advantages for both generating revenue and aligning the interests of universities, industry and faculty. Employing data from a national survey of Carnegie I and Carnegie II institutions, we document the recent rise in university equity holdings. We present and estimate a model that considers the universitys use of equity to be a function of behavioral factors related to the universitys prior experiences with licensing, success relative to other institutions, and the organization of the technology transfer office, as well as structural characteristics related to university type.

Universities as engines of R&D-based economic growth: They think they can

Two issues raised by increased participation of universities in equity arrangements designed to commercialize faculty research are addressed: (a) the effects that an increased emphasis on patenting faculty research and on enhancing the commercial value of these patents has on the characteristics of academic research, net revenue streams, and existing channels through which academic research enters the market, and (b) processes of institutional change and imitation, whereby changes in the policies of elite research universities exert competitive and emulative pressures on other institutions. Increased efforts by universities to foster the commercialization of technological innovations erodes the singular position of institutions of higher learning in the United States. Based on past performance, there is little reason to expect that a substantial reallocation of faculty effort towards commercially oriented R&D will generate appreciable net revenues for other than a select number of universities. These ventures also serve to shift academic researchers from the social roles in which they are most efficient, as suppliers of a collective goodscientific and technological knowledge. “Just as very few men are both capable business managers and ingenious inventors, so few are at the same time ingenious inventors and exalted altruists. Some twenty years ago a university professor devised a method for measuring with accuracy the content of butterfat in milk. The device, if patented, would doubtless have yielded him a very handsome income. The inventor gave it freely to the public, saying modestly that to do so was but part of his duty as a servant of the people and it has come into use the world over. We call his conduct noble; but our very recognition of its nobility is an admission of its rarity” (F.W. Taussig, Inventors and Money Makers (1915) [58]).

Organizational Structure as a Determinant of Academic Patent and Licensing Behavior: An Exploratory Study of Duke, Johns Hopkins, and Pennsylvania State Universities

This paper examines the influences of university organizational structure on technology transfer performance. The analysis treats the organizational structure of the technology-transfer office as an independent variable that accounts, in part, for measured differences in inter-institutional patenting, licensing, and sponsored research activities. We derive and investigate three hypotheses that link attributes of organizational form – information processing capacity, coordination capability and incentive alignment – to technology transfer outcomes. A detailed analysis of three major research universities – Johns Hopkins University, Pennsylvania State University, and Duke University – provides evidence of the existence of alternative organizational structures. The data also suggest that these organizational capabilities result in differences in technology transfer activity.

Impacts of research universities on technological innovation in industry: evidence from engineering research centers

Abstract NSF engineering research centers (ERCs) constitute the most upstream performer of R&D among university–industry–government research centers. Findings from surveys and interviews with 355 firms participating in the 18 ERCs established between 1985 and 1990 indicate that firms participate primarily to gain access to upstream modes of knowledge rather than specific products and processes. Findings also point to problematic continuation of industrial support for ERCs following termination of NSF funding after reaching the maximum number of years (11) permitted under the program, and related pressures on ERCs to direct their research portfolios towards shorter-term, more applied research.

Performance Measurement Redux

Recent developments in the United States in the use of performance measurement in science policy and higher education are used to comment further on the Perrin-Bernstein-Winstondebate about the effective use and misuse of performance measurement. Particular attention is given to the influence of political/organizational factors and the production processes of agencies on how performance measures are constructed and used. The analysis points to further limitations in the use of performance measurement. In both cases, long-gestating, probabilistic linkages between outputs and outcomes limit the usefulness of mainstream indicators as a measure of current agency performance and as a guide to major, discontinuous resource allocation decisions. Conspicuously absent from many performance measurement undertakings are provisions for evaluating the impact of the undertakings themselves. An updated account of the status of the Government Performance and Results Act (GPRA) indicates that the Act has not had the impacts predicted for it.

Virtuous and Vicious Cycles in the Contributions of Public Research Universities to State Economic Development Objectives

State governments are increasingly dichotomizing support of public research universities, selectively enhancing technology-based academic research initiatives while gradually withdrawing support for general educational infrastructure. This dichotomization is based on a narrow perspective of the contributions that universities make to state economic growth, the interdependence of targeted and general support, and the unpredictability of correctly identified university-based scientific and technological advances that contribute to localized economic growth. The trend also runs the risk of generating vicious cycles whereby states lose relative position, especially to states with research-intensive private universities. The trend also reduces the affordability of higher education and contributes to pressures to earmark federal academic research and development funds.

Federal and State Government Roles in Science and Technology

Increased state government participation in the formulation and implementation of national science and technology policies has been proposed in a series of recent reports, most notably the State-Federal Technology Partnership Task Forces Final Report These recommendations are based on state experiences with technology development and manufacturing modernization programs, the premise that public sector activities are needed to accelerate the rate of commercial innovation, and a stylized model of the geographic appropriability of basic, applied, and developmental research and development outcomes. These reports overstate the economic impact and programmatic relevance of existing state programs to the federal setting while understating state program contributions to the development and strengthening of regional technology infrastructures. Increased coordination of federal and state government activities is needed to address dysfunctional aspects of federal research award policies and to enlist states as committed participants in joint federal-state programs.

Multiple actors, multiple settings, multiple criteria: issues in assessing interdisciplinary research

The question of how to assess interdisciplinary research is made more complex by the existence of multiple actors making multiple decisions in multiple organizational settings. These settings include government officials charged with allocating or evaluating public expenditures in political environments increasingly demanding measures of accountability and performance; academic and laboratory administrators engaged in choosing among fields of science and modes of research organization; and researchers engaged in evaluating proposal and manuscript submissions within and across disciplines. Drawing on observations from the United States, the paper describes the interaction among these multiple but linked sets of decisions and decision makers, pointing to the existence of multiple, context-dependent measures of the quality of interdisciplinary research. Copyright , Beech Tree Publishing.

Quality assessment in interdisciplinary research and education

Growth of interdisciplinary research and education is accompanied by uncertainty about how to evaluate interdisciplinary work. What constitute indicators of quality that distinguish the exemplary from the mundane? What research evaluation processes are most appropriate when disciplinary standards do not suffice? To advance the discussion of quality assessment, researchers from Harvard University and the American Association for the Advancement of Science convened a select group of leading research administration (eg National Institutes of Health, Duke University), science journal editors (eg Physics Review) and social scientists, to share innovative practices and empirical results. Core insights are here summarized. Copyright , Beech Tree Publishing.

American state governments as models for national science policy

In the 1980s state governments adopted an entrepreneurial stance and established an extensive array of programs targeted at encouraging university industry research collaboration, the commercial development of new technologies, the start-up of new firms, and the technological modernization of existing firms. Although these state programs are frequently presented as laboratories of democracy, their relevance to national science and technology policy is open to question. State R&D strategies reflect contrasting theories about the linkages among academic research, technological innovation, economic growth, and administrative practices. Evaluations of state technology programs have essentially remained fixed at dead center, as unproven undertakings. State experiences have not been couched in analytical frameworks conducive to assessments of national science and technology policies.