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This paper aims to investigate the nature and dynamics of the interaction between university spin-offs (USOs) and academia.

The theoretical framework is grounded in an interactive view based on the industrial marketing and purchasing literature on USOs and their development. The concepts of activity links, resource ties and actor bonds are used as a starting point for capturing the content and dynamics of the interaction. The empirical part of the paper consists of four case studies captured through interviews as the main data source and analysed to conclude how the interaction between the USO and academia developed over time.

The study identifies a multi-faceted and dynamic content of the interaction. The paper discerns and discusses research and development links, knowledge and equipment ties and social, legal, financial and organizational bonds with inventors, other academic partners and innovation support organizations. The dynamics are manifested both through changes within individual relationships and by adding/ending relationships. One main conclusion regards the existence of wave-like patterns of interaction with academic partners driven by the USOs’ needs and the establishment of customer relationships.

Most of the previous research has described a linear process in which the USO leaves academia once the idea has been transferred to a company. This paper contrasts this view by developing and using an analytical framework to capture the dynamic and continuous interaction between USO and academia.

The purpose of this paper is to analyse the patenting activity of the Brazilian academic sector vis-à-vis the domestic business sector, taking into account the recent evolution of Brazil’s industrial policies. The paper differentiates between “university academic patents”, which are owned by the universities, and “non-university academic patents”, which despite being invented by academic staff are not owned by the universities.

The authors’ cross-checked information regarding the names of all inventors with Brazilian addresses in PCT patent applications in the Espacenet database with the names of researchers in the CVs available on the Lattes Platform of CNPq. The analysis specifically focussed on patent applications published in the PCT with Brazilian priority for the 2002-2012 period.

It was found that the Brazilian academic patents concentrate on science-based technology areas, especially in the Pharma Biotechnology domain. For a total of 466 patent applications with Brazilian priority in this field, 233 have academic inventors. Of those 233 academic applications, 66.1 per cent have universities as their owners, while the remaining 33.9 per cent are not owned by universities. Further, it was found that there are more Brazilian academic patents in the biotechnology sub-domain than those filed by the business sector.

This research was based on the intersection of patent databases and the content available on the official curriculum base of Brazil (Lattes Platform, CNPq). Once the curricula information are voluntary, there are risks inherent reliability of this information.

This study allows us to identify more accurately which is the effective role of the Brazilian Academy in patents generation, revealing that a significant unaccounted deposits with personal inventors or companies’ ownership really have a academic contribution.

This paper shows that the academic sector plays a key role in Brazil’s international patenting activity, particularly in science-intensive technology domains, and it highlights the specific contribution of academic patents not owned by universities.

Este trabalho apresenta a análise da atividade de patenteamento do setor acadêmico brasileiro considerando a recente evolução das políticas de promoção da inovação no Brasil. O artigo tem como base a diferenciação necessária entre “patentes acadêmicas universitárias”, que são patentes/depósitos cujos requerentes são as universidades, e as “patentes acadêmicas não-universitárias” que, apesar de ser inventadas por docentes da academia, não têm as universidades como requerentes dos depósitos.

Foram cruzadas informações de todos os inventores constantes nos pedidos de patentes de origem brasileira realizados pela via PCT, com os nomes dos pesquisadores com currículos disponíveis na Plataforma Lattes do CNPq. A análise incidiu sobre pedidos de patentes publicado na via do PCT com prioridade brasileira para o período 2002-2012 contidos no banco de dados do Espacenet.

Verificou-se que as patentes acadêmicas brasileiras se concentram em áreas mais tecnológicas, especialmente no domínio de Farmácia-Biotecnologia. Para um total de 466 pedidos de patentes com prioridade brasileiros neste setor, 233 tinham inventores acadêmicos. Destes 233 pedidos acadêmicos, 66.1% têm suas universidades como titulares ou co-titulares, enquanto os restantes 33.9% não são de propriedade das universidades. Verificou-se ainda que existem mais patentes no sub-domínio de biotecnologia depositadas pelo setor acadêmico brasileiro do que aquelas requeridas pelo setor empresarial privado.

Neste artigo, demonstrou que a academia desempenha um papel ainda mais expressivo na atividade de patenteamento internacional do Brasil, particularmente em domínios de tecnologia intensivos em ciência, e destaca a contribuição específica das “patentes acadêmicas não-universitárias”, que possuem origem lastreada pelos pesquisadores da academia.

There has been a significant rise in the number of patents originating from academic environments. However, current conceptualizations of academic patents provide a largely homogenous approach to define this entrepreneurial form of technology transfer. In this study we develop a novel categorization framework that identifies three subsets of academic patents which are conceptually distinct from each other. By applying the categorization framework on a unique database of Swedish patents we furthermore find support for its usefulness in detecting underlying differences in technology, opportunity, and commercialization characteristics among the three subsets of academic patents.

Academic knowledge can be put to use in a commercial environment in several ways. One such mechanism to transfer knowledge to the market place is the start of a new, separate company, termed an academic spin-off company, with the aim to commercially develop and exploit the knowledge generated in the university (Fontes, 2003). In 1999, the Dutch Ministry of Economic affairs published a paper stating that the number of high-tech start-ups in the Netherlands lags behind compared to other EU countries and the United States. Subsequently, initiatives were started to stimulate commercial exploitation of knowledge generated within universities. A specific initiative by the Dutch government in the area of the Life Sciences was the so-called Biopartner programme. This was started in 2000 with the objective to enhance the business climate for start-ups in the Life Sciences and to realize 75 start-ups within 5 years (Dutch Ministry of Economic Affairs, 1999). Actions were directed toward increasing awareness, stimulating starters, establishing facilities like a seed fund and academic incubators, and promoting the commercialization of academic knowledge within universities. A few years later, the Technopartner program and the Valorization Grant were implemented with similar instruments aiming at scientists in universities (Dutch Ministry of Economic Affairs, 2003).

Global technological competition has made technology transfer from academia to firms an important public policy issue (Rahm, 1994). Academia and individual academic institutions are a primary source of new knowledge production and innovation (Brennan & McGowan, 2007). It is widely acknowledged that the commercialization of scientific and technological knowledge produced in public funded research institutions, including universities and research centres, into the marketplace have a fundamental role to play in wealth creation, supporting economic growth and technological innovation, and plays a significant role in new venture creation, growth of existing firms, and new job creation (Mansfield, 1991; Harmon et al., 1997; Ndonzuau, Pirnay, & Surlemont, 2002; Siegel, Waldman, Atwater, & Link, 2003b; Steffensen, Rogers, & Speakman, 1999; Walter, Auer, & Ritter, 2006; Perez & Sanchez, 2003). Research by Acs, Audretsch, and Feldman (1992), Jaffe (1989), Mansfield (1991, 1998), and others indicates that technological change in important segments of the economy has been significantly based on knowledge that spin-off from academic research.

The purpose of this chapter is to explore the creation and maintenance of entrepreneurial identity during the establishment of a high-tech university spin-out (USO) company in the United Kingdom. The chapter is based on a case study of a mature PhD student working initially in a research team, and later in a spin-out company, in a UK university; he then founds his own company. The study tracks his understanding and development of different aspects of his professional identity as he works towards shifting career goals in different formal and informal learning settings. The chapter commences with a discussion of the career tensions that might arise during the spin-out process. The next section argues that purposeful construction of entrepreneurial identity may be a significant element in supporting successful career transformation. The third section presents the case in detail. Following a discussion, conclusions are presented. The practical implications of the study are that better understanding of these processes can be used by educators and support staff in classroom settings and in incubators. Theoretically, the chapter adds specifically to the growing literature on entrepreneurial identity, extending it to the realm of science and engineering; the importance of the dynamic between engineering identity and entrepreneurial identity during the transition from engineer to entrepreneur is examined in depth. Most significantly, the case demonstrates how a complex reworking of what it means to be an entrepreneur and what it means to be an engineer takes place that is enormously significant in the crafting of a personal career trajectory.

We examine the origins, acceptance, and spread of academic entrepreneurship in the biomedical field at Stanford, a university that championed efforts at translating basic science into commercial application. With multiple data sources from 1970 to 2000, we analyze how entrepreneurship became institutionalized, stressing the distinction between factors that promoted such activity and those that sustained it. We address individual attributes, work contexts, and research networks, discerning the multiple influences that supported the commercialization of basic research and contributed to a new academic identity. We demonstrate how entrepreneurship expands from an uncommon undertaking to a venerated practice.

Social network theory and analytic tools have been increasingly used to examine the interaction between science and technology. Recently, researchers have paid attention to the role of publishing inventors, that is, individuals bridging the collaborative networks between authors (co-authorship network) and inventors (co-invention network). Building on this research, we study how publishing inventors’ structural position in the joint co-authorship and co-invention network affects the quality of the inventions to which they contribute. Specifically, we identify publishing inventors who play a pivotal role in holding the two networks together: their removal not only increases the network fragmentation but also disconnects the joint co-authorship and co-invention network. We define these publishing inventors as cutpoints and find them to contribute to inventions of greater quality. We situate the analysis within the context of the emerging field of nanotechnology. The theoretical and managerial implications of the results are discussed.

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.

Academic entrepreneurship (defined in this case as the involvement of university faculty and researchers in commercial development of their inventions) has been a unique characteristic of the U.S. higher education system for most of the past 100 years. This long history of interaction, as well as academic patenting and licensing, contributed to the formation of the political coalitions that led to the passage of the Bayh-Dole Act in 1980. This paper reviews the evidence on university–industry interactions and technology transfer, focusing in particular on the role of the Bayh-Dole Act in (allegedly) transforming this relationship. I also examine recent research that considers the Act's effects on the formation of new, knowledge-based firms that seek to exploit university inventions. This research is in its infancy, and much remains to be done if we are to better understand the relationships among high-technology entrepreneurship, the foundation of new firms, and the patenting and licensing activities of U.S. universities before and after 1980.