Institutions of higher education are considered to be an important source of innovation and thereby a key driver of economic growth and development. Consequently, efforts are made to facilitate technology transfer from universities into the market. However, technology transfer in German universities does not seem to live up to its full potential: Using a sample of 7317 university scientists from 2013 covering 73 German universities, we find that while 18.5% of our scientists did in fact generate at least one invention, only 4.5% are actually engaged in commercialization activities. Based on this finding, we then analyze how individual, career-related, and institutional factors affect the innovation and knowledge transfer activities of male and female academics to understand why the vast majority of inventions remains commercially unexploited. We also find positive effects of institutional factors on innovation transfer activities: using the services of patenting agencies not only leads to the generation of inventions but also to stating intellectual property rights and commercially exploiting these inventions.
External publication | 2021 Inventions and their commercial exploitation in academic institutions: Analysing determinants among academic
Bijedić, T; Chlosta, S.; Werner, A. (2020): Inventions and their commercial exploitation in academic institutions: Analysing determinants among academics, in: Mietzner, D.; Schultz, C. (Hrsg): New Perspectives in Technology Transfer, Berlin.