Commercialization of new knowledge within universities: exploring performance disparities

This paper presents an exploratory study of the knowledge transfer performance of public research universities. Data on commercialization outputs were obtained from a comprehensive survey of licensing activities (AUTM, 2003) and scrutinized via a series of non-inferential statistical techniques for patterns that might provide insight into a conceptual framework of innovation developed by the authors. The findings reveal a strong pattern. Close examination of three measures of commercialization performance – disclosures, licenses and startups - indicates that vast disparities exist between a small percentage of high performing universities, and the remaining bulk of under-performers. The gap detected between high performing and low performing universities becomes considerably wider when outcomes in the form of revenues generated from aggregate licensing agreements are calculated for the high-performance universities. These discoveries have significant consequences. First, high performing universities attract resources, both human and financial, with a much stronger pull than lower performing universities. Second, this study confronts a gap in the literature with regard to the prominence of entrepreneurship within the innovation process. The disruptive push/pull factors discovered in this study suggest that an important component of innovation – entrepreneurial capacity – is not given sufficient attention. Third, this study brings new light to bear on the reliability and validity of evaluative tools (variables) currently accepted as indicators of innovation in the university commercialization context. The findings combined with the author’s conceptual framework of innovation indicate that new pathways of research using better performance indicators can and should be found.