► A systematic review covering 20 years of research on academic scientists’ engagement with industry. ► Identifies individual, organisational and institutional factors that drive engagement and ...characterises outcomes. ► Finds that drivers and outcomes of engagement are partly different compared to commercialisation activities. ► Identifies future research needs.
A considerable body of work highlights the relevance of collaborative research, contract research, consulting and informal relationships for university–industry knowledge transfer. We present a systematic review of research on academic scientists’ involvement in these activities to which we refer as ‘academic engagement’. Apart from extracting findings that are generalisable across studies, we ask how academic engagement differs from commercialisation, defined as intellectual property creation and academic entrepreneurship. We identify the individual, organisational and institutional antecedents and consequences of academic engagement, and then compare these findings with the antecedents and consequences of commercialisation. Apart from being more widely practiced, academic engagement is distinct from commercialisation in that it is closely aligned with traditional academic research activities, and pursued by academics to access resources supporting their research agendas. We conclude by identifying future research needs, opportunities for methodological improvement and policy interventions.
Although public research organizations (PROs) are potentially valuable collaboration partners for firms in the development of innovations, most firms find it difficult to develop and sustain fruitful ...collaborations with PROs. Proximity dimensions, such as geographical, cognitive, organizational, and social proximity, are important facilitators of inter-organizational collaboration. Nevertheless, our understanding of the interaction between and evolution of different proximity dimensions over time is limited. Based on a longitudinal study of 15 successful innovation projects involving firms and PROs as collaboration partners, we find that different proximity dimensions are important for the establishment of new collaborations, depending on a firm's characteristics. While engineering-based firms tend to rely on geographical and social proximity to PROs, science-based firms rely more heavily on cognitive and organizational proximity. Moreover, we observe that firms with initial social and geographical proximity to PROs can sustain and expand their collaborations by developing cognitive and organizational proximity over time.
Concerns have been raised that the growing emphasis on the commercial value of academic research may have negative, unintended consequences, notably that it may have a deleterious effect on the ...production and dissemination of scientific knowledge or on the open-ended nature of public science. These concerns have catalyzed an expanding set of empirical studies, the evidence from which is vast and mixed. We review this body of investigative work, teasing out some preliminary conclusions regarding the broader implications of academic enterprise and promising avenues for further research.
The purpose of this paper is to explore whether collaborating with public research organizations (PROs) contributes to strengthening the innovation culture of small and medium sized enterprises ...(SMEs). We examine to what extent their innovation culture is reinforced by collaborations with research organizations and investigate the type of organizational strategies that enhance this effect of collaboration. The empirical study is based on a survey of firms that collaborate with the largest Spanish PRO, Spanish National Research Council (CSIC). Our results indicate that SMEs differ greatly in their capacity to strengthen their innovation culture through collaboration with research organizations. We show also that firms with formal innovation plans that develop internal and external search strategies are more likely to improve their innovation culture as a result of collaboration with PROs. These findings provide managers with new insights into how to strengthen their firms' innovation culture through collaboration with research organizations.
•Technology emergence is characterized by both progress and setbacks.•While established and startup firms tend to reduce efforts following setbacks, public research organizations sustain their ...efforts.•Institutional characteristics that facilitate the pursuit of emerging technologies are also associated with a greater decline in R&D efforts following periods of setbacks.•Sentiment analysis is a useful approach to evaluate progress and setbacks in emerging technologies.
Emerging technologies are an important driver of economic growth. However, the process of their emergence may not only be characterized by technological progress but also by setbacks. We offer a perspective on technology emergence that explicitly incorporates setbacks into the technology's evolution and explains how industry participants may react to setbacks in emerging technologies. We consider that the locus of innovation in an emerging technology encompasses different types of organizations (industry incumbents, entrants and public research organizations (PROs)) who operate in different institutional environments, and explore how these organizations react to setbacks in terms of their R&D efforts. We study two emerging biotechnologies in the global pharmaceutical industry - gene therapy (GT) and monoclonal antibodies (mAbs). The emergence of both technologies during the 1990s was punctuated by periods of setbacks. We observe a gradual increase in industry participants' R&D efforts during periods of progress and a significant decline in those efforts immediately following setbacks. The decline in R&D efforts was more pronounced for firms than for PROs as well as for those firms that were listed on the stock market in contrast to those that were privately financed. Finally, the decline in R&D efforts towards GT was much more pronounced for those organizations located in countries with high capital fluidity. These findings reinforce that organizational and institutional characteristics that are typically attributed to facilitate R&D efforts towards emerging technologies do induce greater levels of those efforts during periods of progress. However, the same characteristics are also associated with a significant decline in R&D efforts immediately following periods of setbacks. Overall, the study illustrates how setbacks reconfigure the locus of innovation in emerging technologies and offers a richer perspective on technology emergence as one that is rooted in both progress and setbacks. In so doing, it highlights the challenges of sustaining technological progress and offers guidance for policy.
Public research organizations (PROs) and universities receive large amounts of public funding for the generation and transmission of knowledge, and companies contract external knowledge from both. An ...important question for the management of a firm's R&D and for public innovation policies is: What is more beneficial for the generation of firm innovations, external knowledge created by PROs or by universities? In this paper, we assess the impact of external knowledge from PROs versus universities on firm innovativeness. We use information on R&D acquisitions from a panel dataset of more than 10,000 Spanish firms from 2005 to 2014. We show that external knowledge from PROs and universities increases firm innovativeness. Our results suggest that knowledge generated by PROs is more sensitive to the absorptive capacity of the firm than knowledge generated by universities. This has implications for research policy, R&D management, and organizational strategies of firms’ knowledge activities. Firms with low absorptive capacities benefit relatively more from knowledge generated by universities than from knowledge generated by PROs. Moreover, R&D managers should plan both their external and internal R&D if they acquire external R&D from PROs.
•Two different worlds among ICT research groups from Argentina were found.•One is the traditional scientific world interested on articles’ number and quality..•The other focuses on technology ...transfer and it has few scientific production.•Scientific productivity is negatively associated with groups’ transfer activities.
In recent years, literature has paid particular attention to analyzing different sources of knowledge as determinants of innovation. Much of the research interest has focused on discussing the role of Public Research Organizations (PRO) in the generation and transfer of knowledge. This paper has two main objectives. Firstly, we explore the factors related to the performance of ICT research groups from Argentinean PRO in terms of both technology transfer and scientific productivity. Secondly, we analyze the relation between groups’ scientific productivity and their technology transfer performance. Our motivation for considering these two dimensions of performance is to analyze comparatively the factors associated with both performance indicators, based on the idea that in Argentina the research groups that are more orientated towards technological transfer are different from those focused on scientific activities stemming from the evidence of some characteristics of Latin American innovation systems and the recent dynamic of ICT in Argentina. The empirical analysis is based on information gathered from 314 Argentine ICT research groups. Results show that scientific productivity is positively related to the proportion of PhD holders, the linkages with other institutions for R&D and the funding coming from national scientific institutions – CONICET and ANPCyT–. Results also evidence that technology transfer activities are associated with linkages that groups hold with other institutions of technological developments. Instead, the greater the funding that groups receive from universities, the lower their transfer activities will be. Finally, the results not only suggest the absence of the linear model of innovation, but the existence of a completely opposite relationship: scientific productivity is negatively associated with groups’ technological performance.
This paper presents a timely analysis of participation in the 8th European Framework Programme for Research and Innovation (EU FP) Horizon 2020. Our dataset comprises the entire population of ...research organizations in Norway, enabling us to distinguish between non-applicants, non-successful applicants, and successful participants. We find it important to distinguish two stages of the participation process: the self-selection stage in which organizations decide whether they wish to apply for EU funding, and the second stage in which the European Commission selects the best applications for funding. Our econometric results indicate that the propensity to apply is enhanced by prior participation in EU FPs and the existence of complementary national funding schemes; further, that the probability of succeeding is strengthened by prior participation as well as the scientific reputation of the applicant organization.
Abstract
This article addresses, conceptually and empirically, the classification of public research organizations (PROs) understood as non-university and non-enterprise research-focused ...organizations that are public by nature or in which the government has an influence. The construction of archetypes of research performing organizations has been a standard method of analysis, as reflected in the Frascati Manual that guides national statistical offices to delineate the perimeter of the institutional sector of PROs. However, this practice has often overlooked the emergence of new types because traditional approaches to classification tend to characterize previously defined mutually exclusive categories, rather than allow evidence to reveal categories ex-post. This gives rise to a number of concerns related to the scientific validity of the classification of entities in the organizational field of research. The present article discusses conceptual and methodological issues associated with different classificatory strategies. It also presents the empirical results of a taxonomical exploration that allows the identification of categories not determined ex-ante. Our empirical strategy consists in applying clustering techniques on a number of organizational dimensions, chosen based on theoretical grounds and proxied by variables determined by data availability. We implement it on a pilot dataset of 197 research-focused organizations from eight different European countries.
Abstract
This article presents the conceptual and methodological design of a register of public-sector organizations, as well as a preliminary delineation of such organizations in Europe. Conceptual ...and methodological issues are discussed, as well as the potential usage of the register for interlining datasets and analysis. The significance of the register for research policy and evaluation studies is also discussed, as related with changes associated with New Public Management reforms.
PDF
