research@hec - Issue #17 - (Page VIII)

The Economic Impact Workshop on Academic Entrepreneurship – 10 & 11 September 2010. of Academic Entrepreneurship The last thirty years has seen an increasing rate of spin-offs from university research; the U.S. Thomas Astebro Association of University Technology Managers reports approximately 3,400 spin-offs between 1980 and 2000, and another 2,900 between 2001 and 2007. This acceleration is not confined to the U.S.: An increasing fraction of academics are engaging in entrepreneurial activities around the world. research What explains this increase, how should academic institutions handle them, and what are the economic impacts of these changes? To address these questions Thomas Åstebro (Associate Professor, Strategy Department) organized a workshop in early September at HEC inviting leading social sciences scholar, policy analysts and practitioners from university technology transfer offices. About 40 people attended. What each brings to the other For Emmanuel Decheneaux (Kent State University), and Jerry and Marie Thursby (Georgia Tech) the use of milestones and consulting payments to the inventor in the transfer of technology from university to industry is beneficial for economic efficiency. Richard Jensen (University of Notre Dame) and Jerry and Marie Thursby (Georgia Tech) showed in another theory paper that consulting by university scientists is positively related to government and industry funding of their research and that they positively leverage each other. Transfer of knowledge into the private sector Richard Jensen (University of Notre Dame), together with Dean Showalter (Texas State University-San Marcos) presented a theoretical model showing that licensing a technology to a start-up is only preferred when it generates greater revenues than licensing to an established firm, or when the cost of searching for a start-up is larger than the cost of finding an established firm willing to purchase the technology. hec Mark Schankerman (London School of Economics) presented a paper written with Sharon Belenzon (Duke University) which showed that knowledge flows from university patents are localized in two respects; they decline sharply after 100 miles, and they are strongly constrained by state borders. The state boundary effect is significantly larger for universities that pursue local and regional development in how they license university technologies. BIOGRAPHY Holder of a PhD from Carnegie Mellon University, Thomas Astebro has been professor in the department of strategy and business policy at HEC Paris since 2008. His work bears notably on entrepreneurship, innovation management, and technological change. Mixed teams and applied research Moving on to the social aspects of academic entrepreneurship, Janet Bercovitz (University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign) and Maryann Feldman (University of North Carolina) reported that scientific teams that are composed of members from multiple institutions – focal university, other research institution, and/or industry – are more successful in generating patents, licenses, and royalties than other teams. Valentina Tartari, Ammon Salter, and Markus Perkmann, all from Imperial College and Pablo D’Este, Polytechnic University of Valencia studied local peer effects – the effect of scientists that have participated in commercial science in same department – on the probability that faculty engage with industry, and found that there is a significant positive correlation, which with some reservations, is interpreted as a causal effect. The workshop was concluded with a discussion on government policy towards stimulating academic entrepreneurship. I VIII research@hec • october-november 2010

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of research@hec - Issue #17

Cover & Contents
How to Find Good Crisis Leaders before Trouble Strikes
Impact of Social Movements on Financial Institutions
European Law: The Impact of Soft Law on the Courts
The Economic Impact of Academic Entrepreneurship

research@hec - Issue #17