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Patenting and spin-off creation by Canadian researchers in engineering and life sciences

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Abstract

This paper examines the determinants of patenting and spin-off creation using survey data of 479 researchers in engineering and 449 researchers in life sciences funded by the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC). The results show that research novelty and laboratory size are the only two variables significantly explaining patenting and spin-off formation in both engineering and life sciences. Network capital explains spin-off formation in engineering and in life sciences as well as patenting in life sciences, but not in engineering. Furthermore, the results suggest that many categories of resources explain patenting and spin-off formation in engineering and in life sciences, but that the combinations of resources required differ for patenting and spin-off formation and between engineering and life sciences. The results of this paper suggest that customized policies would be required to accommodate differences between spin-off formation and patenting as well as between engineering and life sciences.

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Acknowledgements

The authors would like to thank the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada and the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada for their financial support for this project. We also would like to thank Elaine Gauthier, Barney Laciak and Susan Morris from the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council for their comments and suggestions.

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  1. Department of Management, Faculty of Business, Université Laval, Québec, QC, Canada, G1K 7P4

    Réjean Landry, Nabil Amara & Malek Saïhi

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  1. Réjean Landry
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  2. Nabil Amara
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  3. Malek Saïhi
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Correspondence to Réjean Landry.

Appendix

Appendix

Table 6 Distribution of the population and the sample according to scientific fields
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Table 7 Distribution of the population and the sample according to the two scientific fields
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Table 8 The correlation matrixes for the two retained fields
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Landry, R., Amara, N. & Saïhi, M. Patenting and spin-off creation by Canadian researchers in engineering and life sciences. J Technol Transfer 32, 217–249 (2007). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10961-006-9018-7

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