INO Seminar

Seminar by Riccardo Fini, University of Bologna and Case Western Reserve University.

Inside or Outside the IP System? Business Creation in Academia

ABSTRACT

Research and public policy on academic entrepreneurship are largely based on the assumption that faculty commercialize inventions that have been disclosed to university administrators and that usually have been patented. In this paper, we analyze a sample of 11,572 professors and find that much academic entrepreneurship occurs outside the university intellectual property system. Specifically, about 2/3 of businesses started by academics are not based on disclosed and patented inventions. Moreover, we show that individual characteristics, departmental and organizational affiliation, and time allocation of academics who have started business outside the IP system are different from those of academics who have started businesses on disclosed and patented inventions. We discuss the implications for research on academic entrepreneurship and for public policy.