The organization of research activities in industry and academia : implications for the commercialization of university research

Abstract

This dissertation is composed of three essays. In the first essay, I build a model of the choice and timing of entry into commercial activities by an academic research team, and analyze the returns and costs of these activities. I compare the behavior and performance of the academic team to an industrial research team. The two teams are assumed to differ in their objectives, governance modes, and incentive systems. I show that, while in some cases academic scientists are more reluctant to commercialize research, in other cases they may commercialize faster than profit-seeking firms would - and perform less basic research. Academic and non-academic scientists also select different projects, and this may explain the good performance of 'academic entrepreneurs' found in several empirical studies. In the light of these results, I interpret the mixed evidence on the success of, and the arguments in favor and against, the involvement of universities into business-related research activities. In the second essay, I define a model of a firm's choice of whether to conduct research in-house or to outsource it to academic research teams.

(cont.) I exploit the fact that companies and universities have different missions, and model the different authority structures implied by different organizational choices in the conduct of research. Outsourcing a project to a university allows a firm to commit not to terminate or alter a scientifically valuable project before completion. This commitment is potentially valuable for the firm in an environment where scientific value and economic value may not coincide, and scientific workers are responsive to the incentives defined by their community of peers. I then formulate some empirical predictions about the kind of research activities firms will outsource to universities, and activities on which they will exert stronger control. I confront these hypotheses with empirical evidence from a sample of industry-university research agreements, as well as from other analyses and case studies, and find patterns consistent with my model. In the third essay, I analyze the restrictions on publication and control over the research agenda for universities and other 'open-science' research organizations, in a sample of biotechnology research contracts where the sponsor party is a for-profit company.

(cont.) I find that stronger publication restrictions appear to be more frequent in projects concerning earlier phase research and projects with longer duration. Research teams based in hospitals have significantly lower publication delays. Longer project duration is also strongly correlated with higher authority of the sponsoring firm over the direction of research. Teams in more prestigious research organizations tend to be subjected to lesser control by the sponsor company.