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The nanotechnology and biotechnology 'revolutions' are so-called because their enabling technological breakthroughs were not simply inventions, but discoveries of entirely new methods of inventing. We hypothesize that university participants in either or both of these areas will exhibit greater collaboration with industry than researchers in other areas. We explore this hypothesis for 454 faculty members who conducted research that was patented during the period 1994-1999. Because our data include patents, publications, and funding at the individual level, we are able to examine the industry interaction of faculty who participated in the nanotechnology and biotechnology revolutions, as well as the interaction of faculty contributing to other areas of patentable science. We examine a variety of linkages, including sponsored research, consulting, publication with firm employees and measures of the potential for cross-campus collaboration. The results are striking in that they show significant differences in collaborative behavior across patent types and across the major program areas biological sciences, physical sciences and engineering. The results are consistent with a greater degree of tacit knowledge within the new methods of inventing. We also find significant differences in the embryonic nature and importance of patents across areas. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Incumbent firms are often thought to focus on incremental innovations and only respond to a major technological change once its impact on established markets and/or dominant designs becomes clear. We argue, however, that incumbent firms have many reasons to proactively invent early in cycles of technological change. Our interest is in the strategies that allow incumbents to be successful in this endeavor during the infancy of an emerging field-the period before it is clear how the field will affect dominant designs. Our evidence counters the stereotypical view that incumbent firms play a passive role in major technological changes by adhering to incremental inventions in the existing dominant designs. Rather, we find significant inventions by incumbents outside the existing dominant designs and relate their success to their willingness to search novel areas, explore scientific knowledge in the public domain, and form alliances with a balanced portfolio of partners. We find support for our hypotheses using data from the global semiconductor industry between 1989 and 2002. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Licensing of university inventions to industry has experienced rapid, recent growth. This growth is cited as evidence of university success in technology transfer and it suggests an increasing importance of universities to innovation systems. Concerns have been raised that universities are moving towards applied research and away from fundamental research in efforts to capture licensing income. However, figures on growth in licensing perhaps paint a misleading picture, given the substantial variation in licensing success across universities, scientific fields, and technologies. The paper is organized around the following questions. What is the rationale behind university patenting and licensing? How embryonic are university inventions and how often is further development necessary? What is the record on exclusive versus non-exclusive licensing? What is the record on licensing revenue? What are university licensing goals? What is the role of faculty after a licence is signed? Have faculty been diverted from their traditional role in research? [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Functioning well in a global, technology-driven, multi-disciplinary environment necessitates a more robust educational paradigm, especially in science and engineering. For a scientific education to be complete, it can no longer be restricted solely to technical areas. Similarly, law and business students will encounter a slew of technologies throughout the course of their careers. They will be required to comprehend the intricacies and corresponding implications of these technologies in order to impart their perspectives effectively and have an impact. In an effort to address this widely recognized need, a number of multi-disciplinary education and innovation programs have recently surfaced. Although several of these have been documented in the literature, the experiences of participants and the manner in which these will influence their future career plans as well as personal goals are not usually taken into account. Our focus in this paper is to shed light on this ‘end effect’ of being exposed to a multi-disciplinary education by stressing the importance of understanding social, economic, and legal aspects of science and engineering within the context of a scientific graduate-level education. Specifically, the authors take a closer look at the TI:GER ® 1(Technological Innovation: Generating Economic Results) program. Based on their experiences, the authors present their learning and insight on multi-disciplinary education in a mixed technical and professional degree setting. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Understanding the nature of the involvement of faculty in university licensing is important for understanding how technology is transferred through licensing as well as more controversial issues, such as the need for university licensing. Using data from a survey of firms that actively license in from universities, the authors explore the importance of faculty in the licensing and development of inventions, as well as how and why they are used and how the use of faculty relates to characteristics of firms. In particular, the authors find that the use of faculty through sponsored research in lieu of 'a license is closely related to the amount of basic research conducted by firms, whereas the use of faculty within the terms of a license is related to the prevalence of personal contacts between industry research and development researchers and university faculty. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Historically, commercial use of university research has been viewed in terms of spillovers. Recently, there has been a dramatic increase in technology transfer through licensing as universities attempt to appropriate the returns from faculty research. This change has prompted concerns regarding the source of this growth&specifically, whether it suggests a change in the nature of university research. We develop an intermediate input model to examine the extent to which the growth in licensing is due to the productivity of observable inputs or driven by a change in the propensity of faculty and administrators to engage in commercializing university research. We model licensing as a three-stage process, each involving multiple inputs. Nonparametric programming techniques are applied to survey data from 64 universities to calculate total factor productivity (TFP) growth in each stage. To examine the sources of TFP growth, the productivity analysis is augmented by survey evidence from businesses who license-in university inventions. Results suggest that increased licensing is due primarily to an increased willingness of faculty and administrators to license and increased business reliance on external R&D rather than a shift in faculty research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines three different types of neutral technical change which have been referred to as Hicks neutrality (HN). Formally, HN requires that the marginal rate of substitution between each pair of inputs be independent of technical change. Implicit Hicks neutrality (IHN) requires that the marginal rate of substitution between each pair of inputs be independent of technical change at constant factor proportions. Extended Hicks neutrality refers to a situation in which the production function can be multiplicatively decomposed into a function of inputs only and another function of technical change only. Neutrality in a Hicksian sense concerns technical change which leaves marginal rates of substitution between each pair of inputs unchanged. To compare situations before and after technical change, something must be held constant. Exactly what is to be held constant has been the subject of some debate, and constitutes the crux of the issue at hand. In the absence of input homotheticity, IHN neither implies nor is implied by HN. In models where a non-homothetic technology is specified and structured implicitly, IHN is the most natural way of dealing with technical change. The three types of Hicksian neutrality are in general different and some care needs to be taken to distinguish among them.

We analyse a dynamic North-South model of innovation, technology transfer, and trade. Northern firms conduct R&D using labour which has alternative uses producing in the R&D sector or a nontraded good sector. Since technology transfer prevents the North from fully appropriating benefits of R&D, the optimal rate of innovation for either profit maximizing firms or a utility maximizing Northern planner is less than globally optimal. An increased transfer rate intensifies competition of lower wage Southern workers with Northern workers in production, so profit maximizing Northern firms (irrespective of their number or cooperation in R&D) reallocate labour toward R&D. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]