There have always been academic entrepreneurs. The creation of the first universities depended on the patronage of powerful and wealthy individuals, and these were courted by academics seeking to create these institutions of higher learning (Pedersen, 1997). That model of patronage and academic entrepreneurship tied to patronage has continued into modern times (Finn, 1976). At all points in history, patronage depended in part on a quid pro quo in which academics created works of value to the larger society – in the arts, sciences, philosophies, and later in the social sciences.
A uniquely American approach to academic entrepreneurship came with the invention of the agricultural college in the 19th century, where through the Hatch Act the government created a national initiative to promote technology development and transfer in scientific agricultural methods from land-grant universities to their communities and the nation as a whole (Jones & Garforth, 1997). This policy effort’s success depended on academic entrepreneurs who operationalized the nascent policies and actually delivered the inventions and service delivery platforms to take academic ideas and put them into practice. The success of this practice led to the U.S. government growing its support of research and commercialization in academia, although it could be generally argued that research far outpaced commercialization in legislation and practice.
That is, until 1980, when the U.S. Congress enacted the Bayh–Dole Act, landmark legislation that dramatically changed intellectual property rights related to the commercialization of university-based inventions. Bayh–Dole instituted a uniform patent policy across federal agencies, removed many restrictions on licensing, and allowed universities to own patents arising from federal research grants. The senators who designed this legislation asserted that university ownership and management of intellectual property would stimulate the commercialization of new technologies and promote economic development and the overall competitiveness of the American economy.
In the aftermath of this legislation, almost all research universities have established technology transfer or licensing offices to manage and protect their intellectual property. These offices facilitate commercial knowledge transfers through the licensing to industry of inventions or other forms of intellectual property resulting from university research.
According to the Association of University Technology Managers (AUTM) (2013), the rate of university technology commercialization has increased substantially since 1980, as measured by university patenting, licensing activity, and startup formation. In the United States and other advanced industrial nations, policymakers also increasingly view university technology transfer as a potential source of regional economic growth and revenue enhancement for financially constrained institutions of higher learning. University administrators have also effectively made the case to legislators (and other stakeholders) that their institutions are engines of regional economic and entrepreneurial development.
While licensing has traditionally been the most popular mechanism for commercialization of university-based technologies, universities are increasingly emphasizing the entrepreneurial dimension of technology transfer, not just in the number of university-based startups, but also in the proliferation of incubators/accelerators, science parks, and courses and programs promoting academic entrepreneurship. AUTM (2013) reports that the number of startup firms at U.S. universities rose from 35 in 1980 to 705 in 2012. The purpose of this volume is to provide comprehensive quantitative and qualitative evidence on various dimensions of academic entrepreneurship. Chapter 1 by Mary L. Walshok and Josh D. Shapiro develops a framework to improve our empirical understanding of academic entrepreneurship. Their model allows for the development of a much broader and comprehensive set of metrics to evaluate the extent to which universities are engaged in this activity as well as the effects of academic entrepreneurship. This is an important contribution to the academic literature on the effectiveness of university entrepreneurship, given that the current set of metrics does not include the full range of entrepreneurial activities these institutions are engaged in. That is, most empirical studies of academic entrepreneurship have focused on patents, licenses, and spinouts, which only reveal part of the story. The chapter also contains some fascinating qualitative evidence on the evolution of academic entrepreneurship and the role of universities in the creation and growth of new clusters and promising sectors.
In contrast, in Chapter 2, Sharon A. Simmons and Jeffrey S. Hornsby outline a staged-based theoretical model of the process of academic entrepreneurship. This model is based on a synthesis of recent articles on this topic as well as theoretical insights from the authors’ field research. Their framework, which focuses on motivation, governance, selection, competition, and performance, is useful for understanding the antecedents and consequences of this activity. The authors also analyze interactions among these five dimensions. For example, their model conceptualizes that the governance and competitiveness of the commercialized knowledge moderate the mode selection and ultimately, the performance of academic entrepreneurship.
A key theoretical finding of their model is that actors in the realm of academic entrepreneurship are less likely to be motivated by market incentives than other economic actors. Another useful implication of their analysis is that scholars in the emerging field of academic entrepreneurship should broaden their theoretical perspective on this activity, by drawing upon other management and economic theories. These include resource based theories, agency theory, transaction costs economics, ambidexterity, conflict, human capital, role identity, goal-setting, and network theories.
In Chapter 3, Deborah Shepherd and Christine Woods continue our analysis of academic entrepreneurship from a broad perspective. This chapter considers an example of a forward-looking educational program for entrepreneurs from the perspective of a little-used aspect of Schumpeter’s theory and the idea of resistance. Resistance can be inherent in learning to do a new task, from the entrepreneur’s comfort with their usual way of doing things, and from the larger environment’s preference toward tradition. The ICEHOUSE program at the University of Auckland Business School becomes the case study for an example of academic entrepreneurship, taking ideas and expertise from a university, and making it into a commercially viable educational enterprise outside of academe.
The nature of the resistances inside and between the university, the business community and the ICEHOUSE program itself provides an opportunity to explore the multiple and competing logics of the diverse groups involved in the creation of the ICEHOUSE program. Looking at the process of establishing the new organization, developing a network of supporters, and adapting the academic materials to fit the needs of practicing entrepreneurs required a complex articulation and integration of the competing logics of the many groups involved in the project. In the end, the concept of resistance becomes more one of resistive tension, which embodies enabling as well as restraining forces in the process of new venture creation.
The chapter by Bruce Kingma takes a broad system view of academic entrepreneurship by examining factors that underlie successful entrepreneurial ecosystems and positions the university as the engine driving venture creation and regional economic development. Using a rich, single case, Kingma’s Chapter 4 illustrates an interdisciplinary set of programs that focus on experiential education and promotes university-wide entrepreneurship to all students regardless of major. The ecosystem shows the value of all types of faculty including research faculty studying topics in entrepreneurship and innovation; faculty that are venture owners; professors of practice or clinical faculty that bring their background as successful business owners to the classroom; and adjunct faculty that work fulltime at other organizations which provide experiential opportunities for students. In a similar show of diversity and inclusion, students in the ecosystem include those studying entrepreneurship in traditional classroom-based courses; students in innovative internships and consultations with community entrepreneurs; and students that start for-profit and not-for-profit ventures.
Kingma’s chapter provides researchers with a foundational knowledge base regarding the formative stages of an ecosystem’s growth and the challenges that emerge during the different phases of growth. Ultimately, the research hones in on a number of critical success factors that influence individual programs and the academic ecosystem that stretches beyond traditional university boundaries. The chapter provides a summary of recommendations for establishing an experientially focused university-wide entrepreneurship education program by highlighting the critical factors required and exploring mishaps that others should avoid. In sum, Kingma’s research provides a dual focus on community engagement with venture development. Together these two elements produced a diverse, nimble, and strong ecosystem that delivered a positive impact on economic development while simultaneously combatting the “brain-drain” that afflicts many college-town communities where graduates frequently leave for jobs in larger cities.
Starting with Chapter 5, our view of academic entrepreneurship transitions to look at more specific elements within a university’s environment. Leading off this section of the volume, the chapter by Paul Miesing, Mingfeng Tang, and the late Mingfang Li is a comprehensive empirical analysis of the role of Chinese National Technology Transfer Centers (henceforth, NTTCs) in stimulating the commercialization of university research findings. The authors employ “mixed methods,” to conduct this analysis of the importance of these institutions in facilitating university technology transfer and academic entrepreneurship. That is, they provide both qualitative and quantitative evidence. Two key findings emerge from their analysis. The first is that NTTCs are not, by themselves, an effective policy mechanism for accelerating the commercialization of university inventions. The authors report that universities without NTTCs can achieve the same or even greater success than those with NTTCs. They conjecture that to improve technology transfer performance and to enhance academic entrepreneurship, Chinese universities should use management practices that have been adopted by research universities in the United States and Europe, that is, instituting more attractive reward systems for faculty and administrators and providing more autonomy to university technology transfer offices (TTO).
By bringing together insights from economic geography and organizational ecology, our next chapter by Karin Hellerstedt, Karl Wennberg, and Lars Frederiksen examines how regional startup rates are influenced by knowledge spillovers from both universities and firm-based R&D activities. Through the development of a theoretical framework which captures how both supply- and demand-side factors the authors show us how characteristics of the economic and political environment within different regions influence the ratio of firm births. Fundamentally, entrepreneurship is a “regional event” and these authors examine the university’s role by investigating the extent to which localized knowledge spillovers affect startup rate. Broadly, Hellerstedt and her colleagues find that the startup rate of knowledge-intensive service firms is tied more strongly to the supply of university educated individuals and the political regulatory regime within the municipality than startups in high-tech industries.
These findings in Chapter 6 challenge prevailing frameworks that generally focus on supply-side economic factors and shows that knowledge-intensive service-startups are more susceptible to both demand-side and supply-side influences. As such, Hellersted et al. contributes to the growing stream of research that explains entrepreneurial activity as shaped by contextual factors, most notably academic institutions. Overall, the study shows universities as being more complex contributors to entrepreneurial ecosystems than previously thought. It appears that universities not only provide a supply of well-educated labor and potential entrepreneurs to the local context but their R&D activities also contribute positively to the rate of firm birth via opportunities for collaboration with new startups and as a training ground for future entrepreneurs. Together, the theory and the empirical results in this chapter point to support for the notion of “the geographic connection” as an important factor for analyzing entrepreneurial processes. The contributions of this chapter hold important implications for both public policy and university entrepreneurship policy.
In Chapter 7, Jonas Gabrielsson, Diamanto Politis, and Åsa Lindholm Dahlstrand question the current homogenous definition of academic patents in order to facilitate a better understanding of the role of academic institutions in the broader entrepreneurial ecosystem. Through the development of a novel categorization framework, the authors identify three different and conceptually distinct categories of academic patents to abet scholars conducting research on the commercialization and diffusion of academic research. Their work also has broad implications at the university level with respect to legal protections and which individuals and/or institutions are granted rights to exploit the technology in each of the different categories of patents.
Through their ten-year review of nearly 20,000 patents, Gabrielsson and his colleagues identify conceptually distinct categories of academic patents including patents held by (1) academics employed by a university who patent inventions originating from university research, (2) academics employed by a university but who patent inventions that originates from sources outside the university, and, (3) individuals that are not employed by a university but who patent inventions originating from university research. These findings and new categorization framework offer a useful mechanism for TTO managers and other stakeholders in the university innovation system to understand potential technology transfer opportunities and better manager their operations. Overall, Gabrielsson et al.’s research fosters the development of more tailored and customized efforts to promote technology transfer initiatives and also supports the current move toward embracing an economic development mandate in contemporary higher education policy.
Chapter 8, by Clare Gately and James Cunningham, examines an issue that many entrepreneurship educators are wrestling: the role of the business plan in the contemporary startup scene. Some of these issues have come into an even sharper focus lately with the growth in the utilization of lean startup approaches. Using a content analysis of interviews with a sample of 40 technology entrepreneurs, Gately and Cunningham found that the tech entrepreneurs reported doing a business plan strengthens their startups abilities to raise funds and develop their network.
However, these entrepreneurs also reported that spending time on a business plan took time away or even disconnected the tech entrepreneurs from some of the core activities of the startup process. They find that concentrating on the business plan can pose problems when the operational realities or unexpected occurrences of the business would require substantial realignment of the plan, or when the plan’s longer planning horizons get in the way of the day-to-day learning and adaptation of the startup. In the end, most of the tech entrepreneurs saw doing the plan as an impediment to their putting time into the aspects of their businesses that were truly important, with the exception of satisfying the demands of outside funding sources. The authors provide several suggestions for rethinking the formulaic approach to business plans to produce documents of greater value to the entrepreneur, and perhaps even to those considering investing in the businesses.
These chapters provide a valuable contribution to the long history of academic entrepreneurship, showing the myriad settings it is in and forms it takes in the contemporary university. The chapters also show the intellectual contributions the consideration of academic entrepreneurship can make to help expand our thinking about processes and structures for this distinctive form of entrepreneurship, and thereby expand, refine and even challenge our thinking about other forms of entrepreneurship and commercialization.
Andrew C. Corbett
Donald S. Siegel
Jerome A. Katz
Editors
Association of University Technology Managers. (2013). The AUTM licensing survey, fiscal year 2012. Norwalk, CT: AUTM, Inc.
Finn, C. E. (1976). Federal patronage of universities in the United States: A rose by many other names? Minerva, 14(4), 496–529.
Jones, G. E., & Garforth, C. (1997). Chapter 1 – The history, development, and future of agricultural extension. In and B. E. Swanson, R. P. Bentz, & A. J. Sofranko (Eds.), Improving agricultural extension: A reference manual. Rome: Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations. Retrived from http://www.fao.org/docrep/W5830E/w5830e03.htm#chapter%201% 20%20%20the%20history,%20development,%20and%20future%20of%20agricultural% 20extension
Pedersen, O. (1997). The first universities: Studium generale and the origins of university education in Europe. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.