| Abstract: |
For developed countries, continuous innovation has been a prerequisite for
economic growth for some time. Because radical innovations often require
considerable slack and freedom in researching the relevant underlying
phenomena, universities are considered the primary loci for generating
knowledge leading to radical leaps in the development of platforms on which
future technologies build. Thus, to facilitate the improvement of premises for
university research and its application in industry, much effort has been
spent on understanding university innovation processes and the transfer of
technology between universities and companies. Much of the research and the
related discussions have been conducted on either the national, regional or
organizational levels. The focus on institutional actors has largely orphaned
another fundamentally important actor : the individual researcher. This report
examines individual university researchers and their role in the
commercialization of research in Finland. Based on a survey of roughly 2800
researchers active in different fields of science at 11 Finnish research
universities, this report covers a variety of topics ranging from
university-industry collaboration to ownership of intellectual property and
the commercialization services provided to researchers. The primary theme
uniting these topics, however, is the subjective motivation for researchers to
engage in the commercialization of their research. Why do researchers
cooperate with companies, and how do they expect to benefit from
collaboration? What are the reasons why some researchers to commercialize
their results, while others distance themselves from such endeavors? Do
certain dedicated university services support researchers in their commercial
ambitions or actually inhibit them? These are the specific questions this
report seeks to descriptively answer. The results establish that commercial
motives play only a minor role in the various activities in which researchers
engage. For instance, potential commercial aspects have almost no impact on
the choice of a researcher’s research orientation. Furthermore, direct
industrial collaboration is relatively uncommon among researchers. Even those
researchers that have experience with industry collaboration reported that
collaboration mostly serves academic ends such as securing research funding
and searching for new research ideas. In addition, only 10% of all researchers
have received complementary business education. Given that approximately 40%
of researchers are believed to have produced inventions with commercial
potential, 10% seems a fairly small share. This is also reflected in the
researchers’ clear lack of familiarity with the principles that govern the
allocation of ownership rights to inventions that arise from academic
research, a prerequisite to any commercial endeavors. In parallel with these
findings, the propensity of researchers to commercialize their results is much
less affected by economic factors such as potential economic returns than it
is by altruistic, socio-cultural, or personal motives. This makes designing
proper incentive mechanisms difficult. The three most important factors
mentioned by inventors who have made the decision to facilitate the
commercialization of their inventions include (i) the inventions’ potential to
have a beneficial impact on society, (ii) the researchers’ ambition of
self-fulfillment and (iii) securing funding for academic research. Societal
goals and reasons related to pure intrinsic ambition seem to dominate other
motives. It seems that commercialization and related economic aspects bear
little value to researchers. Regarding support in commercialization, Finnish
researchers are quite satisfied with the services provided to them by their
respective research and innovation service units. Only a closer look at the
possible needs of researchers and the degree that the service units match
these needs through services reveals the true challenges regarding the
operation of the units. In fact, the match between needs and provided services
seems to be rather weak, and many researchers indicate that they do not need
most of the services in the first place. This leads to only one conclusion :
the service units are not an integral part of the university culture as yet.
Being satisfied with services that do not match needs tells us that
researchers have not yet embraced such services as a relevant part of their
work or of the technology transfer process. To remedy this situation, much
emphasis needs to be put on communicating the range of available services to
the research community. This is a first step. The second step would be to
design a set of services that address the true needs and ambitions of
researchers and provide proper incentives for researchers to participate in
the transfer of their research results. |