Upload
kristian-powers
View
223
Download
0
Tags:
Embed Size (px)
Citation preview
A Taste for Patents … at University?The Role of University Scientists‘ Attitude Towards Invention Disclosure
“Scientists and Inventors” WorkshopLeuven, 11.05.2012
Christoph Ihl, Thomas Walter, Jan ReerinkTechnology & Innovation Management GroupRWTH Aachen
2
Overview
I. Motivation & Research Questions
II. Theory & Prior Research
IV. Results
V. Discussion & Conclusion
III. Empirical Study
3
Motivation: University-invented vs. university-owned patents
Legislation has empowered universities to own patents; e.g. US: Bayh-Dole-Act, 1980 Germany: abolition of professors’ privilege (ArbNErfG, 2002)
(Some) universities want to be entrepreneurial
Still, substantial knowledge leaks through universities’ backdoor :academic patents owned by firms or scientists, other transfer channels
Scientists’ lack of motivation or conflicts in motivation to disclose their inventions to universities?
Universities’ lack of incentive provision or supportive environment?
Take a look inside the black box of scientists’ decision making: i.e. attitudes, motives & preferences for incentives…
Research Questions: „Taste for Patents with University?“ …
4
… scientists’ attitude towards filing an invention disclosure with their university to examine patentability:
(1) How does it exist?Consisting of motives in line with vs. barriers in contradiction with a “taste for science”?
(2) How does it arise? Formed by individual background and/or institutional context?
(3) How does it matter?Working independently from vs. crowded in/out by external incentives?
5
Overview
I. Motivation & Research Questions
II. Theory & Prior Research
IV. Results
V. Discussion & Conclusion
III. Empirical Study
6
Research framework
InventionDisclosure
Incentives
Taste
Institutional Context
IndividualBackground
7
Theory & Prior Research: Scientists‘ motives to be scientists
“Taste for Science” (Merton, 1973)
Autonomy : academic freedom to solve interesting puzzles & publish Reputation: peer recognition from first discoveries & citations Money: financial rewards less important at the margin
“Scientists pay to be scientists” (Stern, 2004)
Scientific norms (“communism”, “desinterestedness”) even disregard personal value appropriation (Merton, 1942)
“Puzzle, ribbon and gold” (Stephan & Levin, 1992)
Scientists’ taste for science have been subject to a number of recent studies (e.g. Agarwal & Ohyama, 2010; Lacetera & Zirulia, 2008; Roach & Sauermann, 2010; Sauermann & Stephan, 2010)
8
Theory & Prior Research: Motives to commercialize
Many studies have looked into scientists’ attitudes & motives to engage in technology transfer in general (e.g. D’Este & Perkmann, 2011)
Also barriers, negative consequences (e.g. Baldini, 2007; Krabel & Mueller, 2009)
Role adaption => attitude change (Jain, George, Maltarich 2009)
Recently, attitudes / motives in relation / contrast to a “taste for science” =>”taste for commercialization (Lam, 2011; Sauermann & Roach, 2012)
‘Loose collection’ of motives, barriers & incentives w.r.t. invention disclosure (Baldini et al.,2007)
Goal: examine effects of scientists’ attitude specifically on the decision to disclose inventions at university & relative to incentives
9
Theory & Prior Research: Incentives to commercialize
Motivation crowding theory: distinction between motives & incentives (e.g. Frey & Jegen, 2001; Sauermann & Cohen, 2008) Incentives are situational and contingent on behavior Motives are stable, trait-like and describe what on cares about Incentives can change motivation & attitudes (crowding in / out)
by changing self-determination / -esteem Previous research has investigated specific incentives in isolation, e.g.
Royalty shares (cf. Jensen et al., 2007; Lach & Schankerman, 2008; Markman et al., 2004)
TTO, Grace period (Franzioni, 2010)
Interaction between financial motive and incentive on commercialization in general (Sauerman et al., 2010)
Goal: examine interaction effect between attitude towards invention disclosure & a full range of incentives to determine the way of crowding
10
Theory & Prior Research: Scientists‘ background and experience
Publications: => opportunity for patents vs. research basicness(Azoulay et al., 2007; Calderini et al., 2007)
Prior patents => they know how to do it vs. they can do it alone or have enough(Bercovitz, Feldman, 2008)
Industrial involvement: => inspiration vs. applied research / independence from university(Agrawal & Henderson; 2002)
Other: Gender, Nationality, Tenure, Tenured(Waverly, Ding et al., 2006; Bercovitz, Feldman, 2008)
Goal: explain attitude towards invention disclosure such that these trade-offs are revealed
11
Theory & Prior Research: Institutional Context
Faculty quality has been shown to have an impact on the technology transfer performance (van Looy et al, 2011; Perkmann et al, 2011)
Peer effects versus contextual effects (Azouly et al, 2009; Manski, 1993)
Social learning versus Symbolic compliance (Feldman & Bercovitz, 2008)
Goal: investigate whether attitude towards invention disclosure actually mediates contextual effects -> evidence for social learning
12
Overview
I. Motivation & Research Questions
II. Theory & Prior Research
IV. Results
V. Conclusion
III. Empirical Study
13
Empirical study:Sample description
Online survey between December 2010 and March 2011 9 major technical universities in Germany (TU9 association) Identification of 17,178 faculty members from engineering, naturals
sciences, life sciences => e-mail invitation 1,686 (9.4%) usable responses Excluding technical support staff => 1,408 participants, 147 (10.4%) full professors, 244 (17.3%) post docs / junior professors,
and 1,017 (72.2%) research associates / PhD students 77.5% male no significant difference between sample and invited population in
terms of observable indicators gender, rank, discipline, university
14
Empirical study:Sample description
To better account for different patentability across academic disciplines, we manually assigned each institute / chair to belong to one of the following categories (Jaffe, 1989; Zucker & Darby, 2006)
15
Empirical study: Motives & Incentives to disclose invention
Extensive qualitative research to explore motives & incentivesprior to survey: 20 interviews and 8 in-depth case studies with patent-
experienced university officials and researchers at universities in the US, the UK and Germany between January and August 2008
Measuring attitudes as expectancy*value (e.g. Ajzen, 1988)
Motives are framed as beliefs about expected consequences rather than evaluations / importances (Sauermann & Roach, 2012) because of higher predictive value (e.g. Ajzen, 1988, Bagozzi, 1984; Valiquette, Valios, Desharnais, & Godin, 1988;
Pieters, 1988)
16
Empirical study: Measurement & descriptive results for motives
Max. correlation=0.5; max VIF=1.8; max KI=16 Cronbach α=0.86; AVE=0.43; min. loading=0.59
Category ItemMean Profs
Mean Postdocs
Mean PhC cand.
Constraints in topics
Constraints in disclosureConstraints in time
Applicable results
Contribution to public
Reputation
Career perspectives
Access to experts
Access to funding
Personal incomeMoney
… require a shift in my research agenda (reverse)
… require a delay for the publication of my research results. (reverse)
… require additional effort that keeps me from doing research. (reverse)
Autonomy
Recognition
3,40
4,07
4,96
"I expect that filing an invention disclosure to have my work examined for patentability and commercial usability will …"
… ensure that my results applied in actual products and services.
… ensure that my results make a contribution to public.
… lead to higher reputation among my colleagues.
… improve my carrear opportunities.
… lead to contacts with experts in commercialzing the invention.
… lead to additonal funds for my unit.
… lead to a financial benefit for me.
4,10 4,51
4,51 4,97
4,84 5,16
17
Empirical study: Manipulation of Incentives
Manipulation of incentives in a scenario-based conjoint experiment
From marketing to management: decision criteria of venture capitalists (Franke et al., 2008)
IP managers preference for protection strategies (Fischer & Henkel; 2010)
employees’ preferences for incentives to innovate (Leptien, 1995)
employees’ preferences for incentives to engage in entrepreneurship (Monsen et al., 2010)
Suffers from hypothetical bias, but also has 4 advantages: (1) further disaggregation of incentive effects on within researcher level
(2) full range or ‘bundles’ of incentives that are not yet implemented in reality
(3) overcome potential selection bias: scientists may systematically self-select to work at ‘entrepreneurial universities’
(4) respondents have to engage in trade-offs, which reduces the threat of inflated importances obtained from Likert scales
18
Empirical study: Manipulation of Incentives
Incentive Levels
One-off payment for granted patents 0 EUR 750 EUR 1.500 EUR
Royalty shares to the inventor(s) 30% 40% 50%
Royalty shares to the work group 0% 10% 20%
Royalty shares to the faculty 0% 10% 20%
Granted patents count in academic assessments None Patents=Publications
Award for granted patents None Annual Award
Location of technology transfer office Off-campus On-campus
Grace Period None 12 months
• 4 attributes with 3 levels, 4 attributes with 2 levels
• => 34 * 24 = 1,296 possible combinations in a full factorial design
• blocking factor with 3 levels added to split the design among groups
• using Ngene software, we extracted a fraction of 36 conjoint scenarios, such that all main effects and selected two-way interactions could be estimated
• respondents were randomly assigned to a block of 12 scenarios which were in turn randomized
19
Empirical study: Exemplary conjoint scenario
Ratings-based instead of choice-based CA (Elrod et al., 1992)
“This combination of incentives motivates me to have my work results checked for patentability and commercial usability by means of invention disclosure filings” [0=Strongly disagree; 6=Strongly agree]
20
Empirical study: Data on individual background from survey & secondary sources
Survey: Gender Nationality Tenure Tenured Industrial involvement Scale
ISI WoS: papers and citations per individual from 2005-2010
Patstat: patent applications per individual from 2005-2010: 126 (8.95%) academic inventors with 454 patents,
43 university-owned; 11 co-owned by firm
21
Empirical study: Data on institutional context from secondary sources
TU9 association based on the federal statistical office: Number of students, professors, scientifc staff for 2008
Center for University Development (CHE) – Research Ranking 2009: Number of PhD theses, third party funds total, from DFG &
industry
Patstat: number of university-owned patent applications from 2005-2010
ISI WoS: number of publications with university affiliations from 2005-2010
both assigned to academic disciplines according to concordance tables (Jaffe, 1989; Zucker & Darby, 2006)
22
Empirical study: Econometric approach
Accounting for nested, multilevel data structure: (1) Hierarchical linear model, random-effects regression:
(2) Ordered logit model with random effects:
Estimated via simulated maximum likelihood using 100 Halton draws
Interpretation of estimated cefficients via marginal effects recognizing interaction terms (cf. Ai & Norton, 2003; Greene, 2010)
𝑇𝐴𝑆𝑇𝐸 𝑖 𝑓❑ =𝛼+𝜷 ′ 𝑰𝑵𝑫𝒊 𝒇 +𝜸 ′𝑪𝑶𝑵 𝒇 +𝜔 𝑓 +𝜀𝑖 𝑓
23
Overview
I. Motivation & Research Questions
II. Theory & Prior Research
IV. Results
V. Conclusion
III. Empirical Study
24
Results: Estimates on Taste
25
Results: Estimates on Taste
Simulation of L inear Regres s ion Function
LN_PATS
4.50
5.00
5.50
6.00
6.50
7.00
7.50
4.00
1 2 3 40
Avg.P.E. Lower CL Upper CL
Ave
rag
e S
imu
late
d F
un
ctio
n V
alu
e
Simulation of L inear Regres s ion Function
LN_PUB
4.20
4.40
4.60
4.80
5.00
5.20
4.00
1 2 3 4 5 60
Avg.P.E. Lower CL Upper CL
Ave
rag
e S
imu
late
d F
un
ctio
n V
alu
e
Simulation of L inear Regress ion Function
I IN
4.40
4.50
4.60
4.70
4.80
4.90
5.00
5.10
5.20
4.30
.11 .22 .33 .44 .56 .67 .78 .89 1.00.00
Avg.P.E. Lower CL Upper CL
Ave
rag
e S
imu
late
d F
un
ctio
n V
alu
e
26
Results: Partial effect of taste under low incentive conditions
Partial Effects of ATT_ DIR
ATT_DIR
.0010
.0016
.0021
.0027
.0033
.0005
2 3 4 5 6 71
Avg.P.E. Lower CL Upper CL
Parti
al E
ffect
s W
ith
Resp
ect T
o A
TT
_D
IR
27
Results: Partial effect of taste under high incentive conditions
Partial Effects of ATT_ DIR
ATT_DIR
-.0750
-.0500
-.0250
.0000
.0250
.0500
.0750
.1000
.1250
-.1000
2 3 4 5 6 71
Avg.P.E. Lower CL Upper CL
Par
tial
Eff
ects
Wit
h R
esp
ect
To
AT
T_D
IR
28
Results: Marginal effects of Incentives
29
Results: Implied importance
30
Overview
I. Motivation & Research Questions
II. Theory & Prior Research
IV. Results
V. Conclusion
III. Empirical Study
31
Conclusion
Implications „Taste“ can be formed both by hiring the right people and culture /
social learning => double benefit Crowding-in on average, but crowding out for 25% of people with
very high „taste“ => these people need special nurture & appreciation
Limitations & next, future steps further disentangle crowding effects by incentives and (non-
tenured) people Look at mediation Look at moderation of indivdial background effects by context further check & improve quality of individual patent & pub data for
all invited scientists collect data on real patenting behavior (in X years)
32
32
Thank You!
Christoph IhlTIM Group RWTH Aachen University
+49 241 809 3577