Title:The Role Formal and Informal Policies Play in Encouraging University Entrepreneurship
VOLUME: 1 ISSUE: 2
Author(s):Laura Schultz
Affiliation:College of Nanoscale Science and Engineering, 257 Fuller Rd, Albany, NY 12203, USA.
Keywords:Commercialization, entrepreneurship, entrepreneurship education, entrepreneurial ecosystem, technology transfer,
university startups.
Abstract:The creation of startup companies to commercialize university innovations generates revenue for the university
and inventor, attracts star researchers, and promotes economic growth. Despite these benefits, the levels of technology
licensing and startup companies vary widely across universities. These differences have been attributed to factors such as
institutional support for entrepreneurial activity, institutional prestige, proximity to venture capital and related industry,
and sources of research funding. All of these factors combine to create an entrepreneurial environment in which inventors
either perceive that entrepreneurship is encouraged or discouraged. This paper is a meta case study examining the
entrepreneurial environments at twenty universities: ten that have been very successful at generating startup companies
and ten that have underperformed. The role of formal policies such as royalty distribution, conflict of interest, and tenure
and promotion are explored. In addition the availability of entrepreneurial programming such as education, business plan
competitions, and incubators are studied. Together these formal policies and entrepreneurship programming create the
ecosystem in which the inventors and entrepreneurs will need to operate in order to find success. Best practices for
encouraging technology commercialization through entrepreneurship are identified.
