The societal and economic value that comes when academic knowledge is transferred into the marketplace is self-evident, but securing and supporting this knowledge transfer has often been incredibly difficult.
New research from Duke University explores some of the motivations researchers have for engaging in commercial activities, and finds that money is often not the main reason for doing so. Instead, they suggest that factors such as the intellectual challenge and social impact of their work are more important.
The researchers gathered data from around 2,000 academics from across the United States to explore the motives behind their commercial activity, which in this case was measured by the number of patents they created.
Motivating innovation
The researchers focused their efforts on a number of motivators, including money, social impact, peer recognition, and intellectual challenge. Their findings are somewhat surprising in that money appeared to play no role at all.
“Our findings suggest that an emphasis on the revenue that patents can potentially generate does little to incentivize commercial activities by scientists and engineers,” they explain. “Instead, other motives play an important role, although these motives also differ across scientific fields.”
There were some unique findings depending on the topic area, with those operating in the life sciences especially motivated by the social impact of their work. To illustrate the impact this has, the data reveals that a single standard deviation higher desire to contribute to society contributed to a 60% increase in patents.
By contrast, for academics in engineering, the primary motivations seemed to be the intellectual challenges and peer recognition they get from their work, with one standard deviation for them translating to a 68% and 36% growth in patents respectively.
For physical scientists, such as mathematicians and physicists, the primary motivator seemed to be peer recognition, which the authors believe suggests that commercial engagement may actually harm their academic careers.
The researchers hope that their findings will go some way towards helping policymakers and officials better craft policies to help ensure the transfer of knowledge between academia and industry.
“Policy makers and technology transfer offices need to recognize that academics’ motives differ across fields, and structure their support mechanisms and policies accordingly,” the researchers conclude. “Most importantly, instead of hyping the amount of revenue earned from patents, they should stress other motives, such as social impact arising from commercial work.”
