How are US technology transfer offices tasked and motivated-is it all about the money[edit | edit source]
Abrams, I., Leung, G. and Stevens, A.J., 2009. How are US technology transfer offices tasked and motivated-is it all about the money. Research Management Review, 17(1), pp.1-34.
- "Academic institutions spend on average 0.6% of their research budgets on transferring the technology resulting from their research programs, split 45% on patent protection and 55% on operating costs"
- "only 16% are self-sustaining, bringing in enough income that, after distributions to inventors and for research, enough remains to cover the operating costs of the program"
- "fewer than 10% of US institutions' technology transfer programs are primarily motivated by financial return"
- "However, as the results of the Survey also show, this income is highly concentrated in a small number of institutions who have had one big success, most often a drug – the so-called 'big hit'" - AUTM survey - how can we solve this and get consistent revenue?
- operating philosophies can significantly impact the budget requirements of TTOs (spending ratio between operating vs patenting)
- "We found a very clear correlation between the size of a university's research budget and how its TTO is financed."
- "at very small universities, over 60% of TTO's are entirely funded by the institution, while none are funded entirely out of licensing income. In contrast, at large and very large universities, a significantly larger number of TTO's are funded entirely from licensing income, and relatively few are funded entirely by the institution."
- 16% of 130 universities surveyed are self-sustaining
- "that income is not the primary motivator of offices"
Entry Strategies Under Competing Standards: Hybrid Business Models in the Open Source Software Industry[edit | edit source]
Andrea Bonaccorsi, Silvia Giannangeli, Cristina Rossi, (2006) Entry Strategies Under Competing Standards: Hybrid Business Models in the Open Source Software Industry. Management Science 52(7):1085-1098. https://doi.org/10.1287/mnsc.1060.0547
Open Hardware is Ready to Help Technology Transfer Offices Maximize the Impact of Academic Research[edit | edit source]
Arancio, J., Molloy, J., 2021. Open Hardware is Ready to Help Technology Transfer Offices Maximize the Impact of Academic Research. Gathering for Open Hardware, [online] Available at: https://openhardware.science/2021/06/22/open-hardware-is-ready-to-help-technology-transfer-offices-maximise-the-impact-of-academic-research/
- There is a surge in academic open hardware production
- How can we implement open source into TTO models?
- add open hardware to technology transfer toolbox
- using open hardware licenses and certifying programs
- community component benefit to firms using open hardware business models
- increased perceived value of products (need strong brand and network effect)
- reduce innovation costs (user innovation shortening time to market)
- higher-end, non-commodity market (niche due to the level of expertise and specialization that will inhibit competition)
- set standards to define a collective interoperable starting point for further innovation
- add open hardware to technology transfer toolbox
- Steps towards TTO open hardware adoption
- increasing TTO understanding of open hardware, etc
- Fostering dialogue between TTOs and open hardware practitioners
- aligning policies for open hardware as a mean to advance the university's mission and impact
- tracking open hardware initiatives
- tracking impact
- TTOs can generate more social impact from pursuing open hardware
University technology transfer office business models: One size does not fit all[edit | edit source]
Baglieri, D., Baldi, F. and Tucci, C.L., 2018. University technology transfer office business models: One size does not fit all. Technovation, 76, pp.51-63.
- 2002–2012
- "business models that leverage high-quality research (i.e., catalyst) and startup creation (i.e., orchestrator of local buzz) are associated with higher economic performance"
- Bayh-Dole Act 1980
- "between 2002 and 2009, the number of invention disclosures grew by 44% (National Science Board, 2012), and licensing revenues increased by almost 75% (AUTM, 2012)"
- "Miller et al. (2014) suggest that university business models are evolving activity systems, shaped by multiple stakeholders (e.g., academics, TTO managers, provosts and delegates, government representatives). University business models are also characterized by a broader engagement with society (Cesaroni and Piccaluga, 2015) and are gradually substituting models more focused on licensing agreements (Mets, 2010) or academic spinoffs (Dottore et al., 2010)."
- "But which types of business models universities may adopt in technology transfer and how they differ are still an under-researched topic that calls for more scholarly attention."
- "universities in countries such as China and Japan" have also started to file more patents at the USPTO
- "On the other hand, monetary benefits from patenting and licensing are of great concern between university management and industry and sometimes they are sources of coopetitive tensions (Baglieri, 2009). Taken together, these conflicts highlight a growing shift from a pure "public good" knowledge regime to a more "academic capitalist" knowledge regime (Slaughter and Rhoades, 2004)." -- potential benefit of open source
- "Traditionally, the economic impact of technology transfer has been estimated applying input-output models, which largely use IP activity measures." -- benchmarking impact for open source?
- "Cardozo et al. (2011) found that growth in revenues was negatively correlated with TTO cost and efficiency."
- However, little scholarly work has been done to identify types of university business models depending on openness
- open innovation
- value of science as a public good
- Typologies Identified
- Technology transfer as catalyst
- Smart Bazaar
- Traditional Shop
- Orchestrator of Local buzz
- "they point out that technology transfer is a multi-level phenomenon, at the individual, department, and institution levels, and the university business model lens might influence organizational practices to also account for independent scientists' activities beyond the formal TTO activities (e.g., as consultant)"
- "it is important that university managers become aware of the intrinsic costs of technology transfer and able to exploit complementarities within education and research to counter-balance these costs"
Negative effects of university patenting: Myths and grounded evidence[edit | edit source]
Baldini, N., 2008. Negative effects of university patenting: Myths and grounded evidence. Scientometrics, 75(2), pp.289-311.
From Open Source to long-term sustainability: Review of Business Models and Case studies[edit | edit source]
Chang, V and Mills, H and Newhouse, S (2007) From Open Source to long-term sustainability: Review of Business Models and Case studies. In: Proceedings of the UK e-Science All Hands Meeting 2007. University of Edinburgh / University of Glasgow (acting through the NeSC). ISBN 978-0-9553988-3-4
- 5 models for open source software
- Support contracts
- Split Licensing
- Community
- Value-added closed source
- Macro R&D Infrastructure - OMII-UK
- academic + industry
The transformation of open source software[edit | edit source]
Fitzgerald, B., 2006. The transformation of open source software. MIS quarterly, pp.587-598.
- "how OSS 2.0 can accommodate these apparent transformations through achieving a balance between a commercial profit value-for-money proposition while still adhering to acceptable open source community values."
- OSS developers are generally the users of the software they develop
- FOSS business strategy
- Valued-added service-enabling -
- loss-leader/market-creating - "end goal of enlarging the market for alternative, closed source products and services"
Universities as a Source of Commercial Technology: A Detailed Analysis of University Patenting, 1965–1988[edit | edit source]
Henderson, R., Jaffe, A.B. and Trajtenberg, M., 1998. Universities as a source of commercial technology: a detailed analysis of university patenting, 1965–1988. Review of Economics and statistics, 80(1), pp.119-127.
- From 1960s to 1990's, the US saw a decrease in "quality of patents"
- due to:
- Change in federal law (1980) which made it easier to obtain patents for federally funded university research
- Increase in competition for federal funding, causing universities to seek funding from private sector
- Establishment of technology transfer offices
- due to:
Benchmarking US university patent value and commercialization efforts: A new approach[edit | edit source]
Hsu, D.H., Hsu, P.H., Zhou, T. and Ziedonis, A.A., 2021. Benchmarking US university patent value and commercialization efforts: A new approach. Research Policy, 50(1), p.104076.
- "using stock market reactions to patent grants"
- "We estimate the notional "potential" economic value of university patents as benchmarked to a similar portfolio of patents granted to private firms, after controlling for the effect of private firms' complementary assets(such as marketing, production, and logistics)."
- "focal university realizes approximately 21.5-28.8% of the total private value of corporate patents with similar patent characteristics."
- "AUTM universities realize 16% of the estimated value based on publicly-held corporate patents with similar patent characteristics as those from our sample of universities."
- "In terms of economic magnitude, a doubling of R&D expenditure, the number of full-time faculty, and TTO employees, is associated with patent value increases of 50%, 24%, and 37%, respectively, holding other variables fixed." - increasing TTO employees can improve the patent value?
- "However, universities do not possess the downstream organizational complementary assets Teece identifies, such as sales marketing and distribution capabilities necessary for commercialization. This difference between corporate organizations and universities is one important reason for diminished value capture by universities (our analysis in Table 2 aims to adjust for these differences)."
- Measuring social value add is hard... But the whole point of TTOs is for social value add??
- measured by "the estimated values of all patents that cite one prior patent to reflect the social value of that prior patent" (Online Appendix, Table 5) - potentially applicable to open source??
- "we are unable to analyze the overall social welfare effects since it requires valuing academic research effort across commercial and research domains"
Reinventing tech transfer[edit | edit source]
Huggett, B., 2014. Reinventing tech transfer. Nature biotechnology, 32(12), pp.1184-1191.
- "The moves by Penn, Wake Forest and other university TTOs around the United States have been precipitated by major changes in the research funding and commercialization environment in recent years"
- "Throw in the recession in 2008 and the resulting financial crisis, which wiped tens of millions from university endowments, and US academic institutions have had to seriously reevaluate strategies for refilling research accounts"
- "industry wants access to early-stage research; academia needs money to pay for it" - bio focused
Technology transfer organizations: Services and business models[edit | edit source]
Landry, R., Amara, N., Cloutier, J.S. and Halilem, N., 2013. Technology transfer organizations: Services and business models. Technovation, 33(12), pp.431-449.
- Type of TTO's (university, college, public research organizations)
- Valley of Death - incentive differences between research organizations and firms
How do patent incentives affect university researchers?[edit | edit source]
Ouellette, L.L. and Tutt, A., 2020. How do patent incentives affect university researchers?. International Review of Law and Economics, 61, p.105883.
- 20% of TTOs in the United States reporting net negative income (2013)
- + Bayh-Dole proponents - enormous economic benefits, life-saving products, hundreds of thousands of new jobs. increase of $30B per year in U.S. GDP, (thin empirical support)
- - Bayh-Dole detractors: "raising the price of knowledge goods for both consumers and follow-on innovators, many of whom already paid for the initial research through U.S. taxes, outweigh any benefits"
- "traditional justification for patents is that they increase ex ante incentives to create new inventions"
- "there are many inventions for which exclusivity is not necessary for commercialization"
- if researchers are not necessarily motivated by patents royalties we can certainly make a case for open source
- they could be just motivated by receiving credit for ideas -- open source does the same thing --> relate to open hardware paper about documenting the open source technologies
- "much university research is focused on basic scientific findings that are far from any practical consumer good," and researchers rarely commercialize findings themselves
- additional incentives is needed for certain cases for realizing commercializing certain inventions - patenting helps with that but exclusivity is not really needed
- 60% of patent licenses issued by universities are nonexclusive
- economist: "prevents federally funded inventions from remaining 'in warehouses gathering dust'"
- allowed inventions to be brought to market that would have otherwise been
Profiting from technological innovation: Implications for integration, collaboration, licensing and public policy[edit | edit source]
Teece, D.J., 1986. Profiting from technological innovation: Implications for integration, collaboration, licensing and public policy. Research policy, 15(6), pp.285-305.
- "patents do not work in practice as they do in theory - rarely, if ever, do patents confer appropriability"
- "certain complementary capabilities or assets will be needed for successful commercialization"
- "it appears that innovators in weak appropriability regimes need to be intimately coupled to the market so that user needs can fully impact designs" - research open-source and the user
- "The probabilities [of an innovator to possess the dominant design entering the paradigmatic phase] will be higher the lower the relative cost of prototyping, and the more tightly coupled the firm is to the market." (weak appropriability)
- as prices become the point of competition - complementary assets become more critical to success
Beyond Tech Transfer: A More Comprehensive Approach to Measuring the Entrepreneurial University[edit | edit source]
Walshok, M.L. and Shapiro, J.D., 2014. Beyond tech transfer: a more comprehensive approach to measuring the entrepreneurial university. In Academic Entrepreneurship: creating an entrepreneurial ecosystem (Vol. 16, pp. 1-36). Emerald Group Publishing Limited.
The Business Model: Recent Developments and Future Research[edit | edit source]
Zott, C., Amit, R. and Massa, L., 2011. The business model: recent developments and future research. Journal of management, 37(4), pp.1019-1042.
- mention the following: "(1) there is widespread acknowledgement—implicit and explicit—that the business model is a new unit of analysis that is distinct from the product, firm, industry, or network; it is centered on a focal firm, but its boundaries are wider than those of the firm; (2) business models emphasize a system-level, holistic approach to explaining how firms "do business"; (3) the activities of a focal firm and its partners play an important role in the various conceptualizations of business models that have been proposed; and (4) business models seek to explain both value creation and value capture"
OSSG2:
- accountability - reduced liability problems
- talent base - code quality and support
- ecosystems - trialability and quality assurance
Searches[edit | edit source]
Google Scholar for "patenting"
Google Scholar for "open innovation"
Google Scholar for "Canada patenting"
Google Scholar for "open science"
Google Scholar for "tech transfer"
Google Scholar for "open source business model"
Citations to do[edit | edit source]
https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/0f53/e09163308590d18ae30a7588e3bd20a6d3c3.pdf
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1023/B:JOTT.0000034121.02507.f3
https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=650001
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0040162521003140?pes=vor
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0048733311002058
- Policy can successfully establish organizational supports for knowledge transfer.
- Supports appear less important for knowledge transfer than capability and strategic priorities.
- Research intensive universities perform significantly more knowledge transfer activity.
- Less research intensive universities place greater strategic emphasis on the regional economy.
Others[edit | edit source]
- Mitacs Tri-Agency Financial Administration: https://www.nserc-crsng.gc.ca/InterAgency-Interorganismes/TAFA-AFTO/index_eng.asp
- Bayh-Dole Act: https://autm.net/about-tech-transfer/advocacy/legislation/bayh-dole-act
- "allowing small businesses and non-profit organization to retain title to invention made under federally-funded research programs"
