Different Yokes for Different Folks. Individual Preferences, Institutional Logics, and the Commercialization of academic research

Over the past thirty years, a rich body of research has focused on knowledge commercialization activities by academic researchers. On top of the traditional mandates of educational and research, academic entrepreneurship has started to be considered as the “third” mission in which academic institutions get engaged in (Ezkowitz, 2004; Shane, 2004). The underlying rationale for such tendency has to be rooted in the impact that university-basic knowledge has on high-technology sectors -and more generally on the knowledge economy-. Since knowledge may be hard to transfer, it becomes desirable to involve directly academic organizations and scientists into commercially-oriented activities (Agrawal, 2006; Ezkowitz, 2004; Gibbons et al., 1994;; Stokes, 1997; Zucker and Darby, 1995). As a result, both in the U.S. and in Europe, policymakers have implemented norms and policies aimed at stimulating the involvement of universities into the commercialization of research (Geuna et al., 2003). Understanding how the process of commercialization of academic research operates, as well as assessing its impacts, become relevant exercises for both public policy analysis and for managerial considerations. Academic knowledge is transferred to industry and to the marketplace through many different channels, such as new business creation, university-industry collaborations, and patenting and licensing of inventions (Rothaermel et al., 2007). During the last decade, the level of academic entrepreneurship has increased dramatically. In the United States, the number of new U.S. patent applications by academic institutions has risen from fewer than 3,000 in 1996, to more than 10,000 in 2006. The number of start-up companies formed to commercialize university research has grown from fewer than 200 in 1996 to almost 500 in 2006, and the number of licenses and options executed by academic institutions has increased from slightly more than 2,000 in 1996, to slightly more than 4,000 in 2006. Finally, gross license income received by academic institutions has increased from less than $400 million in 1996, to more than $1.2 billion in 2006 (AUTM, 2006). While we have a clear picture of the degree and trends in the involvement of academic organizations and researchers in commercially oriented activities, less is known on whether knowledge commercialization activities by universities and academic researchers can offer something that other actors, e.g., firms, cannot replicate. If the commercialization of research takes place in universities the same way as it does in firms, there would be no reason to involve academic organizations in commercially-oriented activities. A number of studies in Economics and Sociology have characterized academia, and more generally the scientific community, as institutions with their own set of missions, rules, and incentive systems. Openness, peer recognition and evaluation, freedom of inquiry, and incentives based on a “winner-takes-all” journal publication system, in particular, are the main rules that define the “institutional logic” (Thornton and Ocasio, 1999) of the scientific community. As a result, the individuals attracted to the academic and business organization may vary according to their affinity with these different logics (Fini, 2010; Ronstalt, 1990). In this essay, we review the literature that provides theoretical underpinnings and empirical evidence for the peculiarities of “academic entrepreneurship.” In Section 2, we focus on business creation and “direct” commercialization by academics. We will ask how the decision to undertake commercially relevant research and to commercialize its outcome differs in the academic and in the business environment. In Section 3, we review the literature and report examples of two other firms in which academic and industrial research and commercialization connect, and, again, focus on how the different institutional logics determine these relationships and...