Vish Krishnan, Professor of Innovation, Technology & Operations, University of California San Diego Rady School of Man
Vish Krishnan, Professor of Innovation, Technology & Operations, University of California San Diego Rady School of Man
“Expanding Innovation and Commercialization Capability”
“Expanding Innovation and Commercialization Capability”
The growing complexity of industrial research and development has created the need for collaboration between industry researchers and university faculty resulting in increased number of joint-authored publications. Drivers of such collaborative open science publications have received relatively little research attention, specifically the impact of an intermediary - the University’s Technology Transfer Office (TTO). In this paper, we develop and empirically test a theoretical model of TTO and its impact on joint-authored publications. The TTO on the one hand acts as a gateway to the University, by lowering search costs and enabling newer connections between university and academic researchers. The TTO also acts as a gatekeeper securing the University’s intellectual property, and seeking to ensure new discoveries are patented (resulting in “proprietary science”) before they are published openly. We formalize the gateway and gatekeeper effects of the TTO using a formal analytical model, showing that the TTO positively moderates the impact of budget on collaborative open-science publications and the effect is observed (mediated) through the increase in patents. Our modeling and analysis shows that TTO can have a differential impact on collaboration between junior and senior university researchers. Specifically, the TTO’s gateway and gatekeeper impact are larger for junior university researchers in comparison with senior university researchers. The model assumptions and predictions are examined using data collected based on a natural experiment in Japan. Japanese public universities were “urged” to introduce a TTO by their national government in the years 1998-2002. We consider this exogenous policy shock and examine the impact on University-Industry Collaboration. Using panel data, the results of our analysis weigh in on the model findings: first, we find that the introduction of a TTO is associated with the creation of more new industry-academic links and the TTO positively moderating the joint-authored publication output, pointing to the gateway effect. We also find that the Japanese TTO’s positively and significantly impact the University’s patenting activity, and the joint-authored publication impact of TTO is largely felt through the patent-driven publications route, indicating a gatekeeper effect. As predicted by the model, the TTO tends to positively affect the patent production and indirectly stimulate collaborative open science. The data indicates TTO has a differential effect on junior versus senior university researchers. Our theoretical model and empirical evidence offers one of the first models of Collaborative Open Science validated with a novel empirical dataset and suggests that intermediaries such as TTO may be better understood and managed in terms of their gatekeeper and gatekeeper effects as well as through the multiple pathways of technology transfer (instead of just through patents). Implications for improving University technology commercialization and next steps are discussed.