Commercialization of university research: A policy perspective

Academic research has been shown to have considerable commercial potential but there is a wide range of routes available for its exploitation.These routes vary in terms of the extent to which the gains from research are 'captured' by the academics, the parent institution or imitators. A model is developed to identify the most appropriate exploitation policies for dgerent fields of academic research.This model is then tested against a large sample of data from British universities and their academics.It is concluded that the alternative routes of spin-off enterprises, licensing, collaboration or consultancy depend on the nature o f the technology, the intellectual property protection available and the need for complementary assets to assist in their exploitation.