Theories from the Lab: How Research on Science Commercialization can Contribute to Management Studies

Universities and research centres have long been used to study management issues. A growing body of research has focused on how science can be effectively commercialized, emphasizing technology-commercialization activities, university-industry collaborations, and academic entrepreneurship. While much of this work has documented empirical relationships, our aim in this introductory paper of the special issue is to show how research on science commercialization may yield conceptual contributions to the field of management. Hence, we first discuss the importance of context for theory development and how science commercialization can be a promising setting for making contributions to management theory. We then review how the science commercialization context has been used for theory development, identifying two facets used by scholars to conceptualize science commercialization (i.e., managing the lengthy complex process of transition between institutional contexts, and the multiple goals and impacts of actors engaging in science commercialization). This forms the basis for discussing what makes this context particularly suited for theory-development in general management and for outlining a future research agenda. We conclude by summarizing the papers in the special issue.