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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 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, 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.

A fundamental problem in articulating the societal benefits of technology transfer is the lack of hard empirical evidence on the economic gains associated with this activity. To fill this gap, we apply the framework and methods developed by Griliches and Mansfield et al. to assess the social returns to university-based inventions. This methodology can be used to derive explicit measures of key metrics, such as social rates of return and benefit-to-cost ratios characteristic of specific new technologies. A case study is used to illustrate the application of this method.

SESSION I: TECHNOLOGY TRANSFER

Opportunity recognition is an important aspect on entrepreneurship, especially for technology‐based ventures. Drawing on Austrian economic theory, recent studies have emphasized the importance of market knowledge in opportunity recognition. Although insightful, these studies do not take account of relationships that exist between different types of knowledge (e.g. technology and market knowledge). The authors aim to address this gap by integrating the Schumpeterian theory of opportunity development with Kirzner's theory of opportunity discovery to examine these relationships.

The data consist of a longitudinal sample of 42 new biotechnology ventures from the USA, Finland, and Sweden.

The paper finds that both market knowledge and technological knowledge (measured as the number of patents) contribute to firms' subsequent recognition of entrepreneurial opportunities.

The results show the value and importance of early market knowledge and technological knowledge for subsequent opportunity recognition. The empirical findings are reflected in the light of current research on Kirznerian and Schumpeterian opportunity recognition.

This study aims to examine the drivers prompting business leaders to support corporate social responsibility (CSR) practices in Brazil.

The research design selected is a qualitative exploratory multiple-case approach. Data were collected through 16 in-depth interviews with leaders of Brazilian companies.

Evidence is found that the main drivers prompting leaders to support CSR in Brazilian companies are linked to firm performance (economic opportunities and risk management) rather than ethical or external drivers (national policies and stakeholder pressure). In addition to this, the study identifies that for Brazilian business leaders, CSR practices have little to do with individual responsibility and personal fulfilment, but rather with a search for better overall effectiveness of the firm.

This study adds to a relevant and increasing body of literature on organisational behaviour from a societal perspective, offering an understanding of what catalyses organisations to engage in CSR practices.

Drawing on examples from the more developed realms of technology transfer and other “managerial professions” (Rhoades, 1998; Rhoades & Sporn, 2002) in the academy, this paper explores possible organizational sites for housing protocols for the measurement of the social value of individual innovations in higher education (that may enter the market or and augment or precede commercial valuation), and the possible implications of those different settings for the academy (particularly in terms of motivating more faculty to engage in more innovative and entrepreneurial activities). Organizational location matters. Organizational site is related to professional perspective and to the institutional outlook that attaches to various sorts of work in the academy. Five possible sites are explored, analyzing the dimensions of such locations from the experience of other “new” activities in universities. One type of site consists of an interstitial (Slaughter & Rhoades, 2004), nonacademic, support unit of managerial professionals (neither faculty nor senior level administrators), as in an Office of Technology Transfer or an Office of Institutional Research. A second type of site would be an academic unit in which measurement tasks could be performed by faculty members. A third type of site would be a hybrid model that combines elements of the first two models, as in the case of entrepreneurship units in many universities. A fourth possible type of site would be to situate such activity in an intermediating association (Slaughter & Rhoades, 2004) outside of the university, which mediates between public and private sectors, and that promotes various sorts of innovation and measurement as in the case of Educause and innovative information technologies. A fifth type of site would consist of establishing university extension units in the community, to provide services more directly to constituents, as traditionally was the model for agricultural extension in land grant universities. Each of the models has its owns benefits and challenges, its implications for what sorts of professionals would be doing the work and what they would see their principal function as being, and for the impact they would have on the academic workforce and the institution's direction.