Universities and industrially relevant science: Towards measurement models and indicators of entrepreneurial orientation

Abstract

Which university departments engaged in industrially relevant science are likely candidates to become entrepreneurial? At present, there are neither measurement models nor leading indicators that can answer such questions at an international comparative level. This paper introduces concepts, theory, and a measurement model for identifying (the early stages of) a university's enterpreneurial orientation within a quantitative analytical framework. This approach focuses specifically on university–industry interactions, in which the connectivity between academic science and industrial research is captured and measured empirically in terms of (1) public–private co-authored research articles, and (2) references (‘citations’) within corporate research articles to university research articles.

The paper examines a range of country-level and institutional determinants of industrially relevant science, across 18 research areas of significant industrial interest, and at two different levels of analysis: research systems of OECD countries, and large sets of research universities within those countries. The results of these large-scale analyses, along with those of a case study dealing with European universities active in the field of immunology research, suggest that many structural factors determine university–industry interactions and (the potential for) entrepreneurial orientation. The two connectivity indicators appear to be of minor significance compared to a university's country of location and the magnitude of its research activities in industrially relevant fields of science.

Introduction

This paper introduces a novel conceptual and analytical framework to conduct comprehensive and in-depth analyses of university's ‘industrially relevant research’ (IRR) in relation to the science-based entrepreneurial orientation (SEO) of university units. The scope of this paper is restricted to research-related activities, outcomes and impacts (thus excluding teaching, training, and consultancy activities with a commercial value). The earliest stages of SEO can be examined by looking at structural characteristics and abstract functions related to academic research activities, which are operationalised in terms of their research output, and their linkages and interactions with private-sector users of their research-based knowledge. The approach taken in this study focuses specifically on quantifiable information related to the production of codified research-based knowledge and its dissemination to science-dependent industrial R&D.¹

The phenomenon of entrepreneurial universities has now become widespread within the advanced industrialised countries as well as developing countries, and has attracted increasing policy attention. So far, most of the policy debate and empirical analysis focused on economic outputs and impacts of entrepreneurial universities (such as patents, licenses and start-up firms), or their technology transfer mechanisms and facilities. The pervasive diffusion of this entrepreneurial orientation justifies larger-scale and more in-depth empirical studies focusing on enterpreneurial potential. The analytical framework introduced in this paper enables a systematic investigation of early ‘upstream’ knowledge-generating stages of entrepreneurial science and university/industry interactions, both within and across and fields of science, as well as across countries.

The remainder of paper is organised as follows: Section 2 presents a brief review of theoretical concepts, empirical studies and policy issues related to entrepreneurial science that may guide the development of an indicator-based comparative framework. Section 3 introduces the two key indicators of IRR, and describes the methodology and data sets that are applied in the statistical analyses. Section 4 presents the results of the analyses dealing with the aggregate levels of countries and research fields. In addition, the statistical relationships between IRR indicators and university-owned patents are investigated for a sample of European universities active within the field of immunology research. Finally, Section 5 summarises the main findings, observations and interpretations leading to tentative conclusions as to the limitations and relevance of this new approach.