Dynamic interactions between university-industry knowledge transfer channels: A case study of the most highly cited academic patent
Introduction
Knowledge transfer in university-industry interactions can be either ‘formal’ or ‘informal’, depending on the presence or absence of a contract (Vedovello, 1997). Informal channels involve access to the pool of knowledge embodied in the expertise and equipment, and as well as the technical and scientific capabilities and needs, training, recruitment and/or allocation of qualified manpower in universities or firms in the absence of a contract. Formal channels imply contractually regulated exploitation of the knowledge, expertise and equipment available in universities and firms.
The study of formal and informal channels of knowledge transfer between university and industry has a long intellectual history in the field of Economics of Innovation (see Mowery and Ziedonis, 2015, for a recent literature review). Since the US Bayh-Dole act, which allowed US universities to register and license patents from public research, numerous studies have examined the licensing of university patents as a formal mechanism of knowledge transfer between universities and industry (Mowery and Sampat, 2005, Grimaldi et al., 2011). Other formal channels, such as consulting (Roessner, 1993), have also been analysed. Informal channels studied include personal contacts between academic and industry researchers (Cohen et al., 2002, D’Este and Patel, 2007, Bekkers and Freitas, 2008, Ramos-Vielba and Fernández-Esquinas, 2012).
Nonetheless, less attention has been paid to the temporally unfolding, dynamic relationship among channels of knowledge transfer. One partial exception is the work by Faulkner and Senker (1994), who acknowledge the existence of temporal continuity among formal and informal channels, reporting that ‘informal linkage is often both precursor and successor of formal linkage’ (p. 680). Similarly, D’Este and Patel (2007) show that researchers with previous experience of one knowledge transfer channel are more likely to be involved in transferring knowledge through other types of channels in the future. Rappert et al. (1999) find that informal contacts among university and industry actors can create the trust necessary for formal engagement. However, this was not the focus of their work and was not further developed. Most of these works recognize a dynamic interaction among transfer channels without providing more detail, and they do not address the relationships in a temporal sequence of channels, i.e. whether the knowledge transferred by one channel is related to the knowledge transferred using other channels.
Moreover, almost no empirical research deals with the relationship between the dynamic interactions of formal and informal channels and the localization of their economic impact. The assumption of these studies is that knowledge transferred through one channel has no relationship with knowledge transferred through other channels. A corollary of this assumption is that the study of local economic impact can be limited to only one transfer channel. However, this does not mean that the localization of formal or informal channels has not been studied in the literature. For example, there is some consensus that informal knowledge transfer from universities has a more pronounced impact on the local industry since it often depends on personal communication and social connections among inventors which are more sensitive to distance (Breschi and Lissoni, 2001, Singh, 2005). There is less unanimity regarding formal channels. Some studies show the importance of proximity in formal transfer channels such as licensing (Agrawal, 2006) and R&D contracts (Rosa and Mohnen, 2008). Others, such as Audretsch and Stephan (1996, p. 651), find that ‘when knowledge is transmitted through formal ties between researchers and firms, geographic proximity is not necessary, since face-to-face contact […] is carefully planned’. Nevertheless, few studies compare the localization of formal and informal channels. Mowery and Ziedonis (2015) compare the local impact of university patent licences and citations to university patents among three top US universities and find that formal knowledge transfer (patent licensing) is more geographically localized than knowledge transfer based on patent citations, but the authors do not disentangle the channels underlying patent citations. Survey-based studies find opposite results: either formal knowledge transfer channels can be more localized than informal channels (Arundel and Geuna, 2004), or the other way round (De Fuentes and Dutrénit, 2014). Nonetheless, they use cross-sectional data and do not account for a temporally unfolding, dynamic interaction among channels which would require a longitudinal analysis. To our knowledge, longitudinal studies addressing the localization of knowledge transfer are reserved for work on the evolution of patent citations, which show a decline in localization over time (Jaffe et al., 1993). Meanwhile, the localization of economic impact of a temporal sequence of knowledge transfer channels is left unexplored. In this paper we are interested in capturing the moment in a temporal sequence of knowledge transfer channels when the economic impact becomes local.
To address these gaps, we exploit a little used but promising case study methodology to examine the channels of knowledge transfer related to a highly cited university patent, being our research questions: Is the knowledge transferred by one channel related in any way to the knowledge transferred by previously used channels? At which moment in a temporal sequence of channels does economic impact become local?
Section snippets
Case studies of highly cited university patents
The economic and technological importance of highly cited patents has been recognized following the pioneering work of Trajtenberg (1990) (see Barberá-Tomás et al., 2011 for a recent discussion). Jaffe et al. (1993, p. 597) highlight that case studies of highly cited patents can provide a more profound understanding of knowledge transfer:
In future work we plan to identify a small number of patents that are extremely highly cited. It is likely that such patents are both technologically and
Methodology
Although the Cohen-Boyer patent has been identified as the most highly cited biomedical patent granted between 1976 and 1980 (Feldman and Yoon, 2012), the original interest of the qualitative case studies conducted by Feldman et al. (2007) and Hughes (2001) seems not to be its citation record, but the public importance of the patent in the history of biotechnology. In our case, we started by identifying the most cited patent in university patenting history (we had some hope that the methodology
The focal patent: technical and historical context
As already mentioned, the focal patent deals with a specific form of microsensors and actuators known as MEMS, based on the operating principle of electrostatic force. This force is sufficiently large at the nano and micro levels to produce relative movements between the elements of the devices, which then are capable of identifying an alteration in the environment (sensor), or transforming an alteration in a physical movement (actuator). Previous engineering efforts were aimed at reducing size
Knowledge transfer channels related to the focal patent
In this section we describe the knowledge transfer channels linked to the comb drive patent. Although, as already discussed, patents are related intuitively to formal channels such as licensing, we tried to identify all possible knowledge transfer channels that might be involved. Fig. 2 is a visualization of the heuristic approach guiding our enquiry: knowledge can be transferred through formal and local channels (upper right quadrant), informal and non-local channels (lower left quadrant), or
Conclusion
We believe our study makes several contributions. So far, the Economics of Innovation literature has remained almost silent about the dynamic interaction between formal and informal channels for knowledge transfer between university and industry. As Hughes (2001) suggests, the relationship between the knowledge transferred through various formal channels (as licensing and consulting) could be the subject of discussions on property rights. Similarly, our data suggest that the transfer of
Acknowledgements
This research was funded by projects PAID PPI 2091 of the Polytechnic University of Valencia and AICO-2016-A-107 of the Valencian Government. Thanks to IPTS KfG Unit and Xabier Goenaga for usage of its database to identify highly cited university patents. Thanks as well to our colleagues at INGENIO who provided valuable comments during a seminar presentation; to the editor and anonymous referees of the paper, who have provided extensive, detailed and insightful feedback; to Christoph Meister,
References (68)
- et al.
Knowledge diffusion and innovation policies within the European regions: challenges based on recent empirical evidence
Res. Policy
(2013) - et al.
Mapping the importance of the real world: the validity of connectivity analysis of patent citations networks
Res. Policy
(2011) - et al.
Analysing knowledge transfer channels between universities and industry: to what degree do sectors also matter?
Res. Policy
(2008) Impact of MEMS technology on society
Sensor Actuat. A: Phys.
(1996)- et al.
University–industry linkages in the UK: What are the factors underlying the variety of interactions with industry?
Res. Policy
(2007) - et al.
Making sense of diversity: public-private sector research linkage in three technologies
Res. Policy
(1994) - et al.
30 years after Bayh–Dole: reassessing academic entrepreneurship
Res. Policy
(2011) - et al.
Stimulating new industries from emerging technologies: challenges for the public sector
Technovation
(2006) The evolution of science policy and innovation studies
Res. Policy
(2012)- et al.
Enhancing the role of universities in building national innovative capacity in Asia: the case of Taiwan
World Dev.
(2007)
Markets versus spillovers in outflows of university research
Res. Policy
Comparing alternatives to the Web of Science for coverage of the social sciences’ literature
J. Inform.
Making sense of diversity and reluctance: academic-industrial relations and intellectual property
Res. Policy
Science parks and university-industry interaction: geographical proximity between the agents as a driving force
Technovation
Measuring technological novelty with patent-based indicators
Res. Policy
The e-mail reference interview
RQ
Access to Universities’ Public Knowledge: who is more regionalist–access to universities’ public knowledge: who is more regionalist?
Reg. Stud.
Engaging the inventor: exploring licensing strategies for university inventions and the role of latent knowledge
Strateg. Manage. J.
Patent citations as a measure of knowledge flows: the influence of examiner citations
Rev. Econ. Stat.
Localization of knowledge and the mobility of engineers in regional networks
Manage. Sci.
Proximity and the use of public science by innovative European firms
Econ. Innov. New Technol.
Company-scientist locational links: the case of biotechnology?
Am. Econ. Rev.
The diffusion of scientific knowledge across time and space: evidence from professional transitions for the superstars of medicine
Nat. Bur. Econ. Res.
Knowledge spillovers and local innovation systems: a critical survey
Ind. Corp. Change
How high are the giants' shoulders: an empirical assessment of knowledge spillovers and creative destruction in a model of economic growth
Wheels, Clocks, and Rockets: A History of Technology
Open Innovation: The New Imperative for Creating and Profiting from Technology
Links and impacts: the influence of public research on industrial R&D
Manage. Sci.
How do university inventions get into practice?
Manage. Sci.
The explicit economics of knowledge codification and tacitness
Ind. Corp. Change
Geographic proximity and university?industry interaction: the case of Mexico
J. Technol. Transfer
Interest and agency in institutional theory
Inst. Patterns Org. Culture Environ.
Building theories from case study research
Acad. Manage. Rev.
The Triple Helix–University-industry-government relations: a laboratory for knowledge based economic development
Easst Rev.
Cited by (87)
Academics engaging in knowledge transfer and co-creation: Push causation and pull effectuation?
2023, Research PolicyCitation Excerpt :Whereas knowledge transfer involves the unidirectional transfer of knowledge from academics1 to businesses, with the latter independently capitalizing on such knowledge (Siegel et al., 2007), knowledge co-creation involves the integration of the advanced and up-to-date knowledge held by academics with the market and industry know-how possessed by businesses to the end of jointly overcoming specific challenges and solving problems (De Silva and Rossi, 2018). Although the literature has discussed the motivations behind academics interacting with businesses (Azagra-Caro et al., 2017; Bozeman and Gaughan, 2011; van Rijnsoever et al., 2008) and has offered some insights into their decision-making approaches (e.g., Alexander et al., 2020), the interplay between these two critical dimensions has hitherto been overlooked. In particular, whereas the entrepreneurship literature has offered a resource-based argument regarding the interplay (Fisher, 2012; Jiang and Rüling, 2019), there is a lack of consideration of how it is affected by the specific interaction patterns of knowledge transfer and co-creation.
Assessing the Level of Innovation of Poland from the Perspective of Regions between 2010 and 2020
2022, Journal of Open Innovation: Technology, Market, and ComplexityFairly assessing unfairness: An exploration of gender disparities in informal entrepreneurship amongst academics in business schools
2022, Technological Forecasting and Social ChangeCitation Excerpt :While informal academic entrepreneurship has been studied for decades (Perkmann et al., 2013), the literature is still fragmented, and little is known about the dynamics of its processes (Wood 2011; Perkmann et al., 2021). However, it can be observed that it is embedded in a larger process of knowledge transfer with industry (Azagra-Caro et al., 2017). Academics engaging in informal entrepreneurship could follow a path where at each step, they will increase (Parker et al., 2017; Amara et al., 2013; Geuna and Muscio 2009) 1) their proximity to industrial agents, from sporadic to contractual consulting engagements that involve recurring interactions (Vick and Robertson 2018), 2) the revenue generated from the interactions from nonremunerated to remunerated activities (Pinheiro et al., 2016), and 3) the risk associated with the entrepreneurial process, from sporadic commercial activities to the creation of a consulting spin-off company (Schaeffer et al., 2020; Rajaeian et al., 2018).