Elsevier

Research Policy

Volume 40, Issue 8, October 2011, Pages 1045-1057
Research Policy

30 years after Bayh–Dole: Reassessing academic entrepreneurship

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.respol.2011.04.005Get rights and content

Abstract

On the 30th anniversary of enactment of the Bayh–Dole Act in the U.S., we consider the rationale for academic entrepreneurship and describe the evolving role of universities in the commercialization of research. We also discuss and appraise the effects of legislative reform in several OECD countries relating to academic entrepreneurship. The article synthesizes papers from the special section and outlines an agenda for additional research on various aspects of academic entrepreneurship in terms of system, university and individual levels. We also consider measurement and methodological issues that must be addressed in additional research.

Highlights

► We address various aspects of academic entrepreneurship in the 30th anniversary of the Bay-Dole act. ► We describe the evolving role of universities in the commercialization of research results over the last 30 years. ► We synthesize papers from the special section and outline an agenda for future research.

Introduction

In recent years, there has been a rapid increase in technology-based economic development initiatives, focused mainly on stimulating technological entrepreneurship in universities via patenting, licensing, start-up creation, and university–industry partnerships (for reviews of different channels of university technology commercialization see Phan and Siegel, 2006, Lockett et al., 2005, Siegel et al., 2007). We refer to this activity as “academic entrepreneurship,” since the objective of such efforts is commercialization of innovations developed by academic scientists (for a comprehensive review of the literature on academic entrepreneurship, see Rothaermel et al., 2007).

The 30-year anniversary of the Bayh–Dole Act 1980 is an opportune time to assess the antecedents and consequences of academic entrepreneurship. The Bayh–Dole Act contributed to significant changes in how universities commercialize and diffuse technologies developed in their research laboratories and elsewhere on campus. While there is a consensus that these trends have profound managerial and policy implications for those involved in university research and commercialization (Siegel et al., 2007), some question whether the current institutional arrangements for research commercialization are socially optimal (Litan et al., 2007, Kenney and Patton, 2009).

On the positive side, there is the potential for promoting technology commercialization and generating revenue for the university, which is typically re-invested in academic research (Siegel et al., 2004). On the other hand, there has been some concern regarding the dangers of university commercialization, many of which pre-date the enactment of Bayh–Dole (Mowery et al., 2004). This concern has increasingly been narrowed down to particular practices, such as the transfer of materials, publication delays, and material transfer agreements (Blumenthal et al., 1997, Louis et al., 2001, Mowery and Ziedonis, 2007, Walsh et al., 2007).

There is also some debate regarding the contribution that the Bayh–Dole Act has made to society more generally (Verspagen, 2006). The evidence remains mixed on the societal impact, with the strongest criticisms resulting from anecdotal observations (e.g., Press and Washburn, 2000). Academic research has found little systematic evidence of a destruction of the open culture of science or to support the assertion that universities are performing less basic research (Thursby and Thursby, this special section; Welsh et al., 2008).

Given the debate regarding these issues in the scientific literature and the attention of different stakeholders worldwide, it is timely to reassess progress and rethink the direction of policy and practice. An assessment of institutional and public policies and managerial practices can yield new insights for reforming existing policies and creating new mechanisms to support academic entrepreneurship. This special section aims to contribute to such a reassessment.

In the following section, we provide a background to the emergence of academic entrepreneurship offering a qualitative assessment of its antecedents and consequences and focusing on changes in legislation governing the ownership of intellectual property at universities. Section 3 proposes an integrative framework for developing academic entrepreneurship competencies. This is followed by a description of the papers contained in the special section. Next, we outline an agenda for additional research on academic entrepreneurship. The final section considers policy implications.

Section snippets

Rationale for academic entrepreneurship

There is widespread global agreement on the value of promoting the commercialization of knowledge and research generated at public and private universities. A re-conceptualization of the role of public research systems began during the late 1970s in the U.S., following growing concern about the apparent deterioration of national comparative advantage in manufacturing and, in particular, the increasing competition from Japanese firms (Coriat and Orsi, 2002, Florida and Kenney, 1990).

Forms of academic entrepreneurship

While recognizing that it is difficult from an empirical point of view to make an assessment of the benefits related to Bayh–Dole Act like laws, there is consensus that this legislation represents an important trigger for a re-evaluation of the role of the university in society. Recent studies of the manner by which university-generated knowledge diffuses to society have recognized that the university has a multi-faceted role in transferring knowledge (Bishop et al., 2011, Lester, 2005, Wright

Papers in the special section

The 30th anniversary of the enactment of Bayh–Dole is an opportune time to re-evaluate the managerial and policy implications of academic entrepreneurship. An assessment of institutional and public policies and managerial practices can yield new insights for reforming existing policies and creating new mechanisms to support academic entrepreneurship. The special section contains articles that address these issues. They include multiple levels of analysis and examine various aspects of research

Future research agenda

In this section, we outline a future research agenda on academic entrepreneurship, in terms of the three levels of analysis identified above: system, university and individual. For each level we consider further research in terms of general issues as well as in respect of the different dimensions of knowledge and technology transfer from universities. We also highlight a number of measurement and method issues that arise in conducting further research. The main research questions we identify

Conclusions and policy implications

The evidence reviewed in this article and the special section of the journal indicates that the rise of commercialization associated with the Bayh–Dole Act has not resulted in less basic research (Thursby and Thursby, this special section). Bayh–Dole may have also stimulated an increase in start-up activity at universities, which is accelerating due to a growing emphasis on that dimension on university technology commercialization. The social networks that spawn such activity are critical, but

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