Divergent paths to commercial science: A comparison of scientists’ founding and advising activities

This paper investigates the difference in the profiles of university scientists who have founded or advised companies. We analyzed the commercial activities of a sample of 6138 university life scientists and found that the profiles of scientists who become academic entrepreneurs are different from those who become companies’ scientific advisors. Founding activity occurs earlier during a scientist's career than advising. Factors such as gender, research productivity, social networks and employer characteristics also differ in their effects on the propensity for founding and advising. In addition, regression analysis shows that being a company's scientific advisor decreases the probability of becoming an academic founder. Overall, evidence from our analysis suggests that founding and advising are two divergent paths for commercially oriented university scientists.     

The role of academic inventors in entrepreneurial firms: sharing the laboratory life

While science-based entrepreneurial firms are a key feature of the modern economy, our insights into their organization and productivity remain limited. In particular, our understanding of the mechanisms through which academic inventors shape entrepreneurial firms established to commercialize their scientific ideas is based upon a traditional perspective that highlights the importance of human capital. Based on a study of biotechnology firms and their academic inventors, this paper examines the extent and mechanisms through which academic scientists contribute not only human capital but also social capital to entrepreneurial firms. The paper makes two contributions to our understanding of the academic-firm interface: First, it establishes that the social capital of academic scientists is critical to firms because it can be transformed into scientific networks that embed the firm in the scientific community through a variety of mechanisms. Second, the paper argues that an academic inventor’s career plays a critical role in shaping his social capital, thus scientific careers mediate the networks and potential for embeddedness that an academic inventor brings to a firm. Specifically, the foundations of an academic’s social capital can be traced to two sources: The first element that the firm may leverage is the academic’s local laboratory network—a network to current and former students and advisors established by the inventor through his laboratory life. The second form of social capital is a wider, cosmopolitan network of colleagues and co-authors established through the social patterns of collaboration, collegiality and competition that exemplify scientific careers. These findings suggest that scientific careers are central in shaping an academic’s social capital which can be translated into critical scientific networks in which entrepreneurial firms become embedded.     

In good company: The influence of peers on industry engagement by academic scientists

Previous research on academic entrepreneurship and engagement with industry has found that the behaviour of academics is influenced by their local social context. However, we know little about the mechanisms that produce this effect. We argue that academic scientists’ industry engagement is influenced significantly by the behaviour of their peers, that is, the behaviour of colleagues of similar seniority. Using insights from social psychology, we hypothesize that these peer effects are produced by the mechanism of social comparison. In an analysis of data from multiple sources for 1370 UK academic scientists and engineers, we find that peer effects are stronger for early career individuals and weaker for star scientists, suggesting the incidence of social comparison. We argue that individuals look to their immediate peers for inspiration, because they view them as an important reference group and use them as a benchmark for their own ambitions and behaviours. Our findings have important implications for how universities may encourage scientists’ behaviours by paying attention to local work contexts.     

科研人员职业生涯学术表现的差异性研究

本文选择病毒学领域职业生涯超过30年的736名学者,以5年为一个时间窗划分为6个阶段,在分析每个阶段学者在生产力、影响力和合作能力的变化规律的基础上,运用Aspin-Welch检验,探讨不同阶段学者的学术表现究竟是否存在差异。研究结果表明,科研人员在30年的职业生涯中,学术表现存在显著差异性。分析科研人员职业生涯不同阶段的学术表现差异,有助于科研管理者更好地了解人才成长轨迹,为科技人才评价提供政策依据。     

Career progress in centralized academic systems: Social capital and institutions in France and Italy

We analyze the role of social capital in academic careers. We distinguish between ties with reputed scientists and laboratories (scientific and technical human capital) and ties with influential actors with respect to recruitment/promotion decisions (political capital). We use institution-wise bibliometric indicators to measure separately the two types of capital for a large sample of French and Italian academic physicists between 2000 and 2003/2005. Controlling for scientific productivity, seniority and gender issues, career progress is explained by: the scientist's affiliation to important public research organizations (scientific and technical human capital - France); his/her social ties with senior members of the discipline, who exercise control over careers (political capital - Italy), and the commitment to work with senior colleagues in his/her own university (political capital - Italy). Significant differences exist between the two countries also with respect to the importance of productivity, seniority, and gender.     

A taste for science? PhD scientists’ academic orientation and self-selection into research careers in industry

Recent research on industrial and academic science draws on the notion that academically trained scientists have a strong “taste for science”. However, little attention has been paid to potential heterogeneity in researchers’ taste for science and to potential selection effects into careers in industry versus academia. Using survey data from over 400 science and engineering PhD students, we examine the extent to which PhD students’ taste for science (e.g., desire for independence, publishing, peer recognition, and interest in basic research) and other individual characteristics predict preferences for research careers in industry versus academia. Our results suggest that PhD students who prefer industrial employment show a weaker “taste for science”, a greater concern for salary and access to resources, and a stronger interest in downstream work compared to PhD students who prefer an academic career. Our findings have important implications for innovation research as well as for managers and policy makers.     

山中伸弥的“论文-专利”二元行为模式分析

一般认为,科学家尤其是诺贝尔奖科学家科学研究工作成果的主要发表形式是科学论文。但近年来的趋势表明,诺贝尔奖科学家也在大量地申请专利,即便是那些看起来从事基础科学研究的学者,也表现出强烈的专利意识。日本科学家、2012年诺贝尔生理或医学奖得主山中伸弥是其中典型的代表。山中伸弥"论文—专利"行为模式,存在着明显的逻辑合理性和行动连续性,值得我国科学家学习。作为驱动力量的日本科技政策,也值得我国科技政策制定者借鉴参考。     

Revisiting the exploration-exploitation behavior of scholars' research topic selection: Evidence from a large-scale bibliographic database

The research on studying exploration-exploitation behavior in topic choice has consistently been the focus of a great deal of attention. In this study, we propose five novel research strategies under exploration and exploitation based on the general but significant features of topics, and present a series of metrics to quantify and identify these strategies. We analyze the relationship between scientists’ research performance (i.e., productivity and impact) and their preference for different strategies, and examine the evolution of their preference in scientific careers through comprehensive statistical analysis. We employ a MAG dataset as our data source, and select about 30 million scientists from the computer science filed and their publications as our analysis objects. Our empirical analysis shows that productive and impactful scientists tend to follow academic frontiers, study diverse topics, explore emerging topics and combinatorial innovation, but exploit mature topics less often. We also figure out the potential reasons for the phenomenon. In addition, we find that successful scientists prefer to execute exploratory research strategies from the beginning of their career, and young scientists seem to be more creative. Our research may help researchers deeply understand topic selection behavior, and therefore provide enlightenment for training scientists and give advice for funding allocation as well as research and development policy formulation.     

A resource-based view on the interactions of university researchers

The high value of collaboration among scientists and of interactions of university researchers with industry is generally acknowledged. In this study we explain the use of different knowledge networks at the individual level from a resource-based perspective. This involves viewing networks as a resource that offers competitive advantages to an individual university researcher in terms of career development. Our results show that networking and career development are strongly related, but it is important to distinguish between different types of networks. Although networks on various levels (faculty, university, scientific, industrial) show strong correlations, we found three significant differences. First, networking within one's own faculty and with researchers from other universities stimulates careers, while interactions with industry do not. Second, during the course of an academic career a researcher's scientific network activity first rises, but then declines after about 20 years. Science-industry collaboration, however, continuously increases. Third, the personality trait ‘global innovativeness’ positively influences science-science interactions, but not science-industry interactions.     

Mobility versus job stability: Assessing tenure and productivity outcomes

Based on the data from survey responses and publications of 1583 academic scientists in Spain, this paper examines the relationship between scientific performance and reward, considering tenure and permanent positions as key academic rewards in early phases of academic career and focusing especially on the mediating effect of mobile versus stable career paths. Although widely practiced, inbreeding has often been considered to be at odds with universalism and merit in science. Our findings indicate that inbred faculty does not get tenure with less scientific merits than PhDs from other institutions; we also find that non-mobile careers are a strong predictor of the timing of rewards in the form of early permanent positions. Our results question the assumption mainly based on US evidence that mobility enhances career. These findings must be interpreted in the context of organizational and institutional features of the Spanish academic system that promote the development of internal academic research job markets.     

The effect of government contracting on academic research: Does the source of funding affect scientific output?

The growing share of university research funded by industry has sparked concerns that academics will sacrifice traditional scholarly activities to pursue commercial goals. To investigate this concern, I examine the influence of an applied sponsor and consider limitations of the grant funding mechanism. A novel dataset tracks the careers of academic engineers and their relationships with this sponsor. I find that (a) researchers who maintain a relationship with the directed sponsor experience a decrease in publications implying that academics’ careers may be a function of the type of funding received, not only talent; (b) academic merit does not necessarily serve as a funding criterion for sponsors; and (c) citation and publication measures of academic output are often not useful proxies for short-term commercial or social value.     

The gender gap in early career transitions in the life sciences

We examined the extent to which and why early career transitions have led to women being underrepresented among faculty in the life sciences. We followed the careers of 6,336 scientists from the post-doctoral fellowship stage to becoming a principal investigator (PI) – a critical transition in the academic life sciences. Using a unique dataset that connects individuals’ National Institutes of Health funding histories to their publication records, we found that a large portion of the overall gender gap in the life sciences emerges at this transition. Women become PIs at a 20% lower rate than men. Differences in “productivity” (publication records) can explain about 60% of this differential. The remaining portion appears to stem from gender differences in the returns to similar publication records, with women receiving less credit for their citations.     

Local peer communities and future academic success of Ph.D. candidates

Compared to senior scientists, early-career scientists have largely been neglected in the literature on academic success. This study aims to identify the effects of local peer communities of Ph.D. candidates on their future careers. We argue that local communities of Ph.D. candidates may offer both supportive and competitive environments depending on the nature of the relationships between its members. While Ph.D. candidates generally learn from and support each other in their local peer communities, they may also compete for their mentor's attention and future academic positions. We analyse such complex peer effects for 90,264 Ph.D. candidates in the field of mathematics in a genealogical way, by measuring a candidate's academic career success by the number of next-generation Ph.D. candidates supervised later on. To capture both the supportive and competitive peer effects, we distinguish between local peers who share mentors (co-mentees) and other local peers. Our result suggests that competition exists primarily among peers who share mentors, and only at the start of one's career. We also find supportive effects among peers who do not share mentors, particularly those from the same cohort. Our results highlight the importance of universities supporting informal interactions among Ph.D. candidates.     

Reluctant entrepreneurs: patents and state patronage in new technosciences, circa 1870-1930

At a time when neoliberalism and financial austerity are together encouraging academic scientists to seek market alternatives to state funding, this essay investigates why, a century ago, their predecessors explicitly rejected private enterprise and the private ownership of ideas and inventions available to them through the patent system. The early twentieth century witnessed the success of a long campaign by British scientists to persuade the state to assume responsibility for the funding of basic research ("pure science"): their findings would enter the intellectual commons; their rewards would be primarily reputational (financial only secondarily, through consequent career advancement). The essay summarizes recent research in three separate fields of British techno-science--electricity, aviation, and agricultural botany--all of which were laying claim, at this time, to a heightened commercial or military importance that raised new questions about the ownership of scientific ideas. It suggests that each of the three established an idiosyncratic relationship with the patent system or with other forms of "intellectual property," which would both influence their emergent disciplines and affect the extent to which commercial enterprise could remain a viable funding strategy.     

学术创业：研究综述与展望

    以1980至2020年发表的相关文献为基础,对学术创业的研究内容进行梳理,内容如下：（1）总结了已有研究中常用的学术创业概念和分类;（2）围绕学术创业主体,重点阐述了个体层面学术创业活动的研究成果;（3）对学术创业领域常用的理论及其适用问题进行了诠释;（4）从社会经济和基础科学两个方面介绍了学术创业的影响;（5）提出学术创业的研究展望,即关注数智经济阶段学术创业类型的变化、拓展学术创业研究的理论视角、扩充学术创业的研究主题以及在进一步完善国内学术创业研究体系的同时,深化中国制度背景下学术创业问题的探索,如儒家文化环境中的学术创业动机,不同地区/省份的学术创业差异等。通过对已有研究的梳理,为中国学术创业的研究和发展提供了参考。     

Influencing scientists’ collaboration and productivity patterns through new institutions: University research centers and scientific and technical human capital

This paper analyzes the effect of university research centers on the productivity and collaboration patterns of university faculty. University research centers are an important subject for policy analysis insofar that they have become the predominant policy response to scientific and technical demands that have not been met by extant institutions, including academic departments, private firms, and government laboratories. Specifically, these centers aim to organize researchers from across the disciplines and sectors which, collectively as a research unit, possess the scientific and technical capacity relevant to scientific and technical goals of the sponsoring agencies. In this paper, we measure the productivity and collaboration patterns of university researchers affiliated with a relatively large-scale and “mature” university research center to discern the effects, if any, of the center mechanism on individual scientists and engineers. Based on an analysis of longitudinal bibliometric data, the results from this case study demonstrate affiliation with the center to be effective at enhancing overall productivity as well as at facilitating cross-discipline, cross-sector, and inter-institutional productivity and collaborations.     

Guilt by association: How scientific misconduct harms prior collaborators

Recent highly publicized cases of scientific misconduct have raised concerns about its consequences for academic careers. Previous and anecdotal evidence suggests that these reach far beyond the fraudulent scientist and (his or) her career, affecting coauthors and institutions. Here we show that the negative effects of scientific misconduct spill over to uninvolved prior collaborators: compared to a control group, prior collaborators of misconducting scientists, who have no connection to the misconduct case, are cited 8–9% less often afterwards. We suggest that the mechanism underlying this phenomenon is stigmatization by mere association. The result suggests that scientific misconduct generates large indirect costs in the form of mistrust towards a wider range of research findings than was previously assumed. The far-reaching fallout of misconduct implies that potential whistleblowers might be disinclined to make their concerns public in order to protect their own reputation and career.     

Extramural research grants and scientists’ funding strategies: Beggars cannot be choosers?

Although competitive funding of public research has been characterised as providing output incentives that raise efficiency and productivity, we know very little about whether the quality of a scientist's research is in fact the primary award criterion on which funding bodies base their grant decision. This paper provides insights into scientists’ strategies for obtaining project-based research funding in the presence of multiple funding opportunities. It draws a distinction between four types of grants, including the Sixth Framework Programme for Research and Technological Development (FP6), government, foundation, and industry grants. Based on a sample of more than 800 scientists at universities and public research institutes in Germany, the results indicate that scientist productivity measured in terms of publication and patent stock is a statistically significant determinant only for obtaining foundation and industry grants while the award of an FP6 or government grant is influenced by other characteristics. The results further show that the different grants are not complementary, i.e. scientists specialise in certain grants. In this respect, the analysis informs science, technology and innovation policy about potential discrepancies between policy rhetoric, stipulated award criteria, and actual funding outcomes which makes it possible to fine-tune the debate on how public research should be financed.     

If star scientists do not patent: The effect of productivity, basicness and impact on the decision to patent in the academic world

We run an Event History Analysis on a sample of Italian researchers in the field of Materials Science, aiming at understanding how the characteristics of the research trajectories followed by scientists in academia affect their opportunities to do development of industrial applications. Results of our estimates suggest that all measures of academic performances have a dual effect, although different in magnitude. Scientists that are moving along applied research trajectories find it easier to produce industrial applications than their colleagues engaged in the quest for very fundamental understanding. We interpret our results by suggesting that, for the former, more academic research results in more exploitable results, hence in more chances to patent; for the latter, more academic research makes it just more unlikely that they will find the time to produce industrial applications. Similar results apply for the low versus high research impact.     

Edwin Mansfield’s contributions to the economics of technology

Edwin Mansfield’s contributions to the economics of technology are summarized from the early 1960s through his death in 1997. Mansfield’s methodology is discussed, as are his contributions on: the diffusion of technical innovation, the effect of firm size on innovation, the role of academic and basic research in increasing innovation and productivity, international technology transfer and the inaccuracy of technological forecasts. The economics profession’s evaluation of the relative importance of Mansfield’s work is presented, using as evidence citation counts of his works collected from the Social Science Citation Index (SSCI). Identified as among Mansfield’s most important contributions are his work on the importance of academic research for industrial innovations, his empirical estimation of the rates of diffusion of different innovations, and his estimation of the private and social returns from investments in industrial innovations. Finally, we present Mansfield’s advice on the future of the economics of technology.