Academic institutional entrepreneurs in Germany: navigating and shaping multi-level research commercialization governance

Please see Additional file 1 for translation of the abstract into Arabic.

Academic entrepreneurship (AE)¹ is expected to change public research institutions² in a fundamental way to ensure they contribute to wealth and job creation. It is widely accepted that this will be achieved by new kinds of relations between societal actors (universities, governments, industry, NGOs and new intermediary institutions), formal and informal linkages and networks (Etzkowitz and Leydesdorff 2000; Link and Siegel 2007). Empirical studies have shown that academic entrepreneurship is a quite heterogeneous phenomenon: there are strong national and regional differences in how widespread, how intense and institutionalised academic entrepreneurship is in different types of research organisations (e.g. Goel and Göktepe-Hulten 2017; Grimaldi et al. 2011). It also significantly varies in different institutional environments in terms of barriers and facilitators scientific entrepreneurs encounter (Davey et al. 2015) as well as what kind of characteristics they have (Werker et al. 2017). An “unevenness” of how scientific entrepreneurs commercialise and what their role is in commercialization in different disciplines and how research (and other) institutions accommodate AE is observed (Kleinman and Osley-Thomas 2014; Tuunainen and Knuuttila 2009).

One challenge in understanding these differences lies in understanding them as part of broader multi-level research and innovation governance structures and mechanisms (De Boer et al. 2007; Siegel and Wright 2015; Whitley et al. 2010) that support highly fluid Triple Helix systems (Etzkowitz and Leydesdorff 2000). Managerial organisation principles along New Public Management (NPM) -inspired reforms have been linked to the aim towards more entrepreneurial orientation in research organisations (Felt and Glanz 2004; Kezar 2014; Leišytė and Dee 2012; Etzkowitz 2013). Particularly within an institutionalist tradition, increased academic entrepreneurship is seen as the outcome of institution-building processes (e.g. Berman 2012). Without doubt, state financial support and regulation of AE have been influential across Europe and in the USA (e.g. Grimaldi et al. 2011; Sigl and Leišytė 2018). New intermediaries (technology parks, departments and agencies supporting entrepreneurship) and dynamic entrepreneurial networks have changed governance arrangements and opportunity structures for scientific entrepreneurs (Meyer and Kearnes 2013; Doganova 2013; Werker et al. 2017; Wright et al. 2008). Here, the role of technology transfer offices and their management has been underscored as they engage in intellectual property management, scout for new ideas within their research organisations and negotiate agreements between their organisations and private industry and raise awareness of the importance of patenting and licencing for their research organisations (e.g. Leišytė 2011).

Compared to the extensive work on structural changes and linkages in the Triple Helix systems and their contribution to the knowledge economies, the agency of individual scientific entrepreneurs in commercialization of knowledge and the paths they undergo to shape their environment to their advantage is still underexplored. Studies on the individual level have often been limited to the typology of roles of scientific entrepreneurs (Etzkowitz 1997); how they respond to incentives for AE and how effective they are (Siegel et al. 2004); what they perceive as barriers to knowledge commercialization (D’Este and Patel 2007; Lockett et al. 2003); what is the likelihood of bypassing technology transfer offices (Huyghe et al. 2016); what are the determinants of academic engagement including formal commercial activities, informal commercial activities and non-commercial activities (Abreu and Grinevich 2013); the stages of academic entrepreneurial process (Tijssen 2006) or motivations to engage in AE (Balven et al. 2018; Fochler 2016; Lam 2011; Thursby and Thursby 2005; Rizzo 2015; Rosa and Dawson 2006; de Silva 2012). Particularly for the context of Germany, the role of scientists in engaging in AE has often been depicted as rather passive and inert to the top-down attempts of establishing the “third mission” (Krücken 2003; Wentland et al. 2012) or as not being aware of the technology transfer structures in their research organisations (Goel and Göktepe-Hulten 2017).

Less frequent, scientists are depicted as active protagonists of an entrepreneurial mindset (Latour 1996; Shapin 2008), as lobbyists for the case of AE (Berman 2012: 857) or as actively pursuing collaborations and multiple affiliations and industry (Hottenrott and Lawson 2017). Studying individual agency in university settings, for example, has also been rather a recent phenomenon (Hasanefendic et al. 2017; Leišytė et al. 2017). At the same time, the studies of research managers’ role in AE on the other hand—are largely focused on the sub-organisational level, such as technology transfer offices and their impact.

In this paper, we focus on the agency of individual scientific entrepreneurs and research managers in research commercialization and institutional change in the context of multi-level governance mechanisms and linkages in the particular Triple Helix system. We understand the agency embedded in the organisational context, which is why we explore the questions both from the perspective of research managers as well as from the perspective of scientists. Our study combines these perspectives, therewith responding to the call for multi-level analyses (Siegel and Wright 2015) of AE on the one hand, while at the same time, to multiple calls for unpacking the agency of scientific entrepreneurs in knowledge commercialization (Berman 2012). The study explores the following questions:

To situate our study on AE within the particular multi-level governance context in Germany, we first explore the political and institutional contexts, provide the conceptual framework, describe the triangulation of methods in this study and present our data. The paper closes with the discussion and conclusion proposing future avenues for research in AE.

Germany has been described as being a “latecomer to adapting its university system to the changing knowledge economy” (Lange and Krücken 2011: 343) but is considered today to be one of the strongest performing innovation systems in the world with a strong industrial base (EC 2015; BMBF 2014: 469), having relatively favourable conditions for entrepreneurship (Davey et al. 2015). Already between 1976 and 1988, technology transfer offices (TTOs) were established in all public universities. Recently, start-up competitions organised by universities, city governments, regional economic promotion agencies provide additional resources for AE. This shift towards a knowledge economy was amongst others due to a range of federal and state policy initiatives, including a number of targeted measures to improve research commercialization conditions in research organisations. For example, EXIST, one of the most prominent programmes for promoting university-based start-ups and entrepreneurial culture at German universities, was launched in 1998 (Volkmann and Grünhagen 2014: 235–6). In its fourth stage, this programme today aims to transform selected universities into entrepreneurial universities (“Gründerhochschulen”) (BMWE – Bundesministerium für Wirtschaft und Energie 2015) via the establishment of “a culture of entrepreneurship in its teaching, research and management” (Kulicke 2014: 12).

In the case of the state of North Rhine-Westphalia (NRW), governance on the state level has been particularly influential in fostering AE. NRW historically has been a heavy industry state, with mining industry at the forefront. Today, the largest industrial sectors include heavy machinery and chemical industry, followed by food industry, metal production, automotive industry, electrical engineering and electronics. In 2015, the NRW state accounted for 21.3% of the German GDP maintaining its status as the country’s economically strongest region (EC—European Commission, 2018). Ranking amongst the most populous of German’s 16 states (17.5 million population) with the highest density of research organisations and universities, the state supports technology transfer already since the 1960s after the radical decline of coal and steel industries. Besides the establishment of a range of universities to support local high-tech industries in NRW, it also hosts one of the oldest and largest German “technology centres” and technology parks. As a result, today NRW universities have a range of state, federal and industry support structures available to foster AE.

While in the literature the “third mission” of research commercialization is often described as strongly rejected by universities in Germany (Krücken et al. 2007: 676), recent studies have revealed that public research organisations did not necessarily oppose commercialization, but were content with their “informal transfer activities” and feared “an additional bureaucratic layer” (Lange and Krücken 2011: 364). The high level of informal AE activities in Germany (and in industrial areas like NRW in particular) makes it often difficult to determine changes in actual commercialization activities.

Another aspect of change has taken place in terms of strengthening the autonomy of universities from the state since the 1990s in NRW as one of the forerunners of these reforms in Germany (Hüther and Krücken 2018). A third important development for AE in Germany is a new intellectual property rights (IPR) regulation which was passed in 2001. The so-called professors’ privilege was abolished, i.e. professors are now obliged to report any patentable inventions to allow the university to own and exploit the intellectual property while in return the university covers all costs involved in filing patents and academics are entitled to 30% of revenues from licencing. New structural arrangements such as patent exploitation agencies (“Patentverwertungsagenturen”) were created to assist universities in this new task (cf. Krücken et al. 2007: 688; Kulicke et al. 2014).

The conditions for individual scientists to engage in AE still vary in NRW despite the abovementioned general shifts in Germany. This can partly be attributed to the diverse organisational landscape of research organisations. Research universities, universities of applied sciences and other public research institutions have their unique organisational structures as well as organisational cultures when it comes to AE. While technology transfer services are institutionalised within universities (TTOs), some services are outsourced to the patent exploitation agencies outside the universities. Universities of applied sciences are more centralised in their decision-making and have closer links to industry due to their applied mission compared to more research-driven research universities, where the power of professors is still holding its base alongside increased centralised management. Their decision-making lines are long and include multiple stakeholder interaction. The German science system also includes public research organisations such as for example research institutes of the Max Planck Society or Fraunhofer Society. All of them engage in knowledge commercialization, even the most basic research-oriented ones. The research institutes differ in their missions: the institutes of the Max Planck Society are rather oriented towards basic research and are largely funded by the state, the institutes of the Fraunhofer Society are oriented towards applied research and are closely linked to collaborations with the private sector. As a rule, the Societies serve as umbrella organisations for their institutes in providing TTO type of apparatuses for technology transfer, such as the Max Planck Innovation or Fraunhofer Venture (Doppelberger 2012; Mahr 2012; Lange and Krücken 2011). Research institutes are smaller organisations compared to universities and operate quite independently from their umbrella Society, thus their decision-making lines are shorter.

From the abovementioned changes, we learn that while commercialization activities used to be carried out by scientists rather informally and independently from their research organisations, the legal and structural changes of the recent two decades have brought AE more into the organisational bureaucracy of German research organisations. However, it is unclear how the abovementioned structural and regulatory changes have influenced AE practices. Evidence on this is partly inconsistent: after the first years of the EXIST programme, the creation of start-ups rather stagnated in the EXIST-programme regions, while it increased in other regions (BMBF – Bundesministerium für Bildung und Forschung, 2002). It also has been shown that the abolishment of the professors’ privilege has not led to an increase of inventions at universities, only to an increase of university-assigned patents (von Proff et al. 2012). This shows that still little is known about how policies, legal frameworks and new funding programmes change AE practices in the German context, and what role scientists assume in a context in which the professoriate was long used to strong academic self-governance (cf. Lange and Krücken 2011: 351).

This paper builds on semi-structured qualitative interviews (1–1 ½ h) with research managers and scientists, as well as a profound desk research and an analysis of relevant organisational documents. As we explain below, this triangulation of different methods (Flick 2008) allowed to tackle our research questions from different methodological angles, facilitating a well-rounded analysis.

The interviews were conducted between January 2015 and November 2016 in a high-performing region in AE in NRW (Germany). The strength of the German research system, particularly regarding transfer activities, is often explained by the co-existence and collaboration of universities and other public research institutes (such as the Max Planck Society, the Leibnitz Association or the Helmholtz Society). To grasp this special aspect of AE in Germany, we included interviewees at one technical university and two other public research institutes in close proximity (one being more applied science and one more basic science oriented) that have close ties to the technical university. Further, we included managers of two nearby technology centres to cover the growing start-up sector in the region. From a total of 21 interviewees, 15 had managerial experience: 9 interviewees held purely managerial positions, most of whom had earlier started an academic career but were now employed as research managers. They worked in different departments responsible for entrepreneurship-related tasks (e.g. patenting, support for start-ups), including a vice-rector, a head of a legal department, several employees of TTOs and leaders of technology centres. Five of the interviewees were scientists in leading positions at a university, public research institution or start-up and were thus also responsible for managerial tasks related to AE. Our interview sample reflects a trend in the German context that managerial tasks are divided between research managers with an academic background (e.g. in law or biosciences) and scientists who, as a result of NPM reforms, were attributed considerably more managerial tasks (Krücken et al. 2013). The 12 interviewed scientists all came from bio- and chemical engineering, a field with high application potential and strong transfer activities (through cooperation with industry or, often in cooperation with the technology centres, in start-up creation). The focus on engineering allowed to cover the broad range of commercialization activities within a Triple Helix configuration in the practices of one broader research field. The choice of interviewees also reflects the collaboration of scientists across universities, other public research institutes and start-ups that is relevant for research. We carried out semi-structured “intensive” interviews (Charmaz 2006: 25f) based on the concept of “reflexive peer-to-peer interviews” (Felt et al. 2008). In this interview approach, interviewers are understood as “peers” in the sense that they are active in the academic environment and therefore share experiences with interviewees. This allowed for engaging interviewers and interviewees in a reflexive discussion on the topic, thus gaining more in-depth access to the experiences of scientists within their particular work constellations. We chose this largely individual-centred methodological approach because previous work on commercialization at German universities has shown that linkages to civil society in general seem to “thrive on individual motivation and commitment” (Krücken et al. 2009: 139). This approach was particularly useful for reflecting on how interviewees experience their institutional context, the relevant actors for research commercialization and their own role in AE. All interviews were transcribed and analysed using NVIVO software, following a grounded theory approach (Glaser and Strauss 1998, 2005).

To explore how far the ways in which research managers and scientists attributed different roles in practices of research commercialization also reflected organisational self-representations, we further carried out an analysis of strategic documents and self-representations of the research organisations under study (the technical university, two other public research institutes), such as annual reports, descriptions of transfer services, patent strategies or websites. Further, we analysed self-representations of relevant technology centres or platforms supporting commercialization activities (e.g. webpages, flyers). Following Prior (2003), we approach such documents as a specific text genre, that conveys a certain imagination of a system (in this case of academic entrepreneurship) where documents do not simply describe but define and act upon what they depict. The analysis focused on how the agency of organisations and managerial staff is described, as well as on how the agency of scientists is depicted within the field of AE.

The choice of analysed documents built on a comprehensive desk research to identify relevant documents and map relevant institutions and actors. The desk research also included an analysis of the history of start-up creation in the region, an analysis of founding documents and organigrams of start-ups and research facilities and patenting activity in the respective institutions (via DEPATISnet³). This provided profound background information for reconstructing activities of key actors. Most importantly, it helped to illuminate the role of two professors (we call them in the following Prof. A and Prof. B) who were frequently mentioned by interviewees as core agents in shaping entrepreneurial culture and the institutional landscape for supporting research commercialization in the region, but repeatedly declined interview requests. Particularly, in cases in which field access proved to be difficult, the approach of triangulating methods allowed gaining a well-rounded analysis of different kinds of agency in AE in this region.

In the following, we first describe what kinds of agency are attributed to research managers (as organisational actors) and scientists in our empirical material. Building on that, we explore who is ascribed agency of bringing about institutional changes within the Triple Helix configuration.

Answering the calls from previous studies to explore how the individual level and the organisational level intertwine in academic entrepreneurship (Huyghe and Knockaert 2015: 155) and to understand the agency of individuals in the Triple Helix relationships (Ranga and Etzkowitz 2013), we have explored how both research managers and scientists narrate and ascribe agency in research commercialization in their particular contexts. Although new regulations such as the abolishment of the professors’ privilege have tied AE closer to the university, our study confirms, that this tie is a rather “loose coupling between the formal structure and the activity structure” (Lange and Krücken 2011: 365). Unlike the expectation that research managers would see their role in demanding more engagement in the third mission from scientists in their organisations as suggested by literature on strong managerial control of universities in the USA as well as other Anglo-Saxon higher education systems (Geiger and Sá 2008; Bleiklie et al. 2015; Rhoades 1998), research managers in our German example framed themselves as passive service-providers for scientists’ self-motivated commercialization activities. At the same time, they were ascribed agency by scientists in terms of facilitating creative employment arrangements so as to mitigate the risk of not having job security via the start-up and allowing smooth transitions for the scientists’ career between two sectors. Interestingly, we observe that this self-perception of research managers being service providers was more dominant in the university setting than in the research institutes. The power of academic self-governance and professors in German universities has traditionally been high and due to a strong role of path-dependencies to a large extent still exists (Hüther and Krücken 2018).

In terms of the agency of scientists, research managers perceive them as self-motivated driven individuals who exhibit a strong entrepreneurial character and are highly creative risk-takers. Many of studied scientists saw it natural to negotiate the institutional arrangements and find flexible solutions to deal with the structural bureaucratic barriers within their research organisations even though sometimes it was really difficult to deal with the highly established bureaucracies. Scientists also engage in risky developmental work, but they tend to avoid taking a combination of personal and professional career risks. Rather, they try to stay with one foot in the “safe” position at research organisations to avoid existential risk. We observe them as bricoleurs using the resources they have to negotiate with research managers temporary organisational arrangements to flexibly accommodate their ventures as well as some of them as institutional entrepreneurs who use their prestige (these are usually professors), entrepreneurial skills as well as political networks to acquire governmental as well as industrial funding to create new institutions, overcome or create new rules and establish new structures to facilitate AE. Following Etzkowitz’s typology of entrepreneurial scientists, they are “craftspersons” who like to participate in the whole innovation process, and who make innovation processes possible by gathering necessary resources and sometimes act as “sustainers” by rather modest and pragmatic institution-building (Etzkowitz 1997: 146).

Overall, trust in scientific entrepreneurs from research managers, scientific standing and leadership of scientific entrepreneurs, as well as type of AE—e.g. start-up creation or collaboration with industry—were very important for the engagement in shaping the Triple Helix relationships in the region. Given the regulatory constraints and path-dependencies of research organisations, the agency of scientific entrepreneurs, especially their ability to manoeuvre, negotiate and find creative solutions regarding their funding and career paths points to their central role in navigating and shaping the organisational dynamics towards AE in their research organisations. Particularly, studied scientists with managerial functions are observed as leaders of institutional change in creating new hybrid infrastructures (created through co-funding of industry, government and research organisation) for producing knowledge, and for steering it towards R&D areas that are relevant for industry. These scientists with managerial function often bear resemblance with the “mogul” type in Etzkowitz’s typology, as they see themselves and are described by others as strong leaders in shaping not only their own ventures and firms, but creating new institutional infrastructures for research commercialization (Etzkowitz 1997: 146).

Still, it is important to underscore that the studied scientific entrepreneurs operate in an environment that is highly conducive for scientific entrepreneurship—with numerous governmental financial opportunities, strong regional science infrastructure, as well as in the research organisations (technical university and the research institutes) that do create rooms for manoeuvre for scientists. Especially, the technical university is actively supporting their scientists through new contractual arrangements, cross-sectoral hiring practices, provision of support structures for research commercialization, or following the lead of scientific entrepreneurs in creatively interpreting legal regulations.

These findings suggest that “bricolage” activities and the trust of research managers in the leadership and autonomy of scientific entrepreneurs have prepared the ground for durable institutional change (e.g. in the case of R8 and Prof. A) which also can be the ground for institutional entrepreneurship to take place and reshape the Triple Helix relationships in the particular context. The extent to which these two different types of agency are co-existing and are distinct merits more attention in the future studies on AE.

This study has shown the complexity of the context-specific relationships between individual and organisational levels in AE and pointed out the important role of embedded individual agency in shaping institutional opportunity structures for AE within the Triple Helix context. This is in line with previous studies that point to the individual and group agency in the university or Triple Helix contexts (e.g. Hasanefendic et al. 2017; Chatterjee et al. 2018, Schmidt and Lauer 2016). Specifically, research managers in our study who had a scientific position and managerial function at the same time were very much in line with what Ranga and Etzkowitz (2013) define as “innovation organisers”, while the other scientists fulfilled the roles of entrepreneurial scientists who combine their research interests with innovation and entrepreneurial behaviour. Our study shows in more detail the types of agency that these two actors have in shaping the institutions. At the same time, our findings point to the limits of agency exercised by the research managers, as they mainly adopt a service role instead of proactively shaping institutions. Even though this gives leeway for entrepreneurial scientists to act, stronger presence of innovation organisers amongst researcher managers who engage pro-actively in creating accommodating structures for boundary crossing in the Triple Helix context would be beneficial.

Studies on how different scientific entrepreneurs and research managers navigate their environments in other sectors, such as creative industries or in low-resourced Triple Helix contexts, could show an even broader variety of ways in which they act as change agents (or refrain from doing so). We would expect context-specific differences, as in different regional and national governance regimes due to various historical, cultural and institutional path dependencies (Sigl and Leišytė 2018). Further studies thus should expand the contextual reach by addressing and comparing different types of research organisations and regional specifics. Such studies would be much needed to broaden our understanding about the particular organisational conditions and academic cultures that foster and shape the individual agency in the Triple Helix context.

Our study has important implications for research managers. When scientists’ autonomy is respected by the organisation and when research managers provide rooms for manoeuvre, scientific entrepreneurs cross the boundaries and create more balanced Triple Helix context shifting flexibly between traditional academic values and the capitalization of knowledge (Etzkowitz 1997). They do so either by altering the institutional framework within the existent organisation (engage in institutional entrepreneurship), or by finding flexible temporary contractual arrangements to move between research organisation and the private sector engaging in AE (through bricolage). Research managers would benefit by creating room for manoeuvre and openness to dialogue with scientists in facilitating this flexibility in employment contracts and careers. Entrepreneurial culture, financial incentives and manifold other tools to promote academic entrepreneurship may be effective to raise awareness or interest of scientists in knowledge transfer. But it is really about spotting and fostering institutional entrepreneurs to take centre stage and create opportunity structures and processes which facilitate concrete initiatives of knowledge and technology transfer in research organisations that may alter the Triple Helix arrangements in a particular setting.

Organisations could learn from this study that governance arrangements that promote security in career progression do not necessarily impede the AE initiatives but that organisational flexibility and the opportunity to keep an academic position as a back-up strategy may soften the involved risks and in fact support institutional entrepreneurs in mitigating risks. Our study thus supports the hypothesis that career structures and employment security are important factors for strengthening research collaborations (cp. Cattaneo et al. 2018). Thus, the human resources strategies and practices alongside the technology transfer practices should not be left as a blind spot in research organisations when thinking about enhancing AE engagement.