1. A Taste for Patents … at University? The Role of University Scientists‘ Attitude Towards Invention Disclosure “Scientists and Inventors” Workshop Leuven, 11.05.2012 Christoph Ihl, Thomas Walter, Jan Reerink Technology & Innovation Management Group RWTH Aachen

2. 2 Overview I. Motivation & Research Questions II. Theory & Prior Research IV. Results V. Discussion & Conclusion III. Empirical Study

3. 3 Motivation: University-invented vs. university-owned patents  Legislation has empowered universities to own patents; e.g.  US: Bayh-Dole-Act, 1980  Germany: abolition of professors’ privilege (ArbNErfG, 2002)  (Some) universities want to be entrepreneurial  Still, substantial knowledge leaks through universities’ backdoor : academic patents owned by firms or scientists, other transfer channels  Scientists’ lack of motivation or conflicts in motivation to disclose their inventions to universities?  Universities’ lack of incentive provision or supportive environment?  Take a look inside the black box of scientists’ decision making: i.e. attitudes, motives & preferences for incentives…

4. Research Questions: „Taste for Patents with University?“ … 4 … scientists’ attitude towards filing an invention disclosure with their university to examine patentability: (1)How does it exist? Consisting of motives in line with vs. barriers in contradiction with a “taste for science”? (2)How does it arise? Formed by individual background and/or institutional context? (3)How does it matter? Working independently from vs. crowded in/out by external incentives?

5. 5 Overview I. Motivation & Research Questions II. Theory & Prior Research IV. Results V. Discussion & Conclusion III. Empirical Study

6. 6 Research framework Invention Disclosure Incentives Taste Institutional Context Individual Background

7. 7 Theory & Prior Research: Scientists‘ motives to be scientists  “Taste for Science” (Merton, 1973)  Autonomy : academic freedom to solve interesting puzzles & publish  Reputation: peer recognition from first discoveries & citations  Money: financial rewards less important at the margin  “Scientists pay to be scientists” (Stern, 2004)  Scientific norms (“communism”, “desinterestedness”) even disregard personal value appropriation (Merton, 1942)  “Puzzle, ribbon and gold” (Stephan & Levin, 1992)  Scientists’ taste for science have been subject to a number of recent studies (e.g. Agarwal & Ohyama, 2010; Lacetera & Zirulia, 2008; Roach & Sauermann, 2010; Sauermann & Stephan, 2010)

8. 8 Theory & Prior Research: Motives to commercialize  Many studies have looked into scientists’ attitudes & motives to engage in technology transfer in general (e.g. D’Este & Perkmann, 2011)  Also barriers, negative consequences (e.g. Baldini, 2007; Krabel & Mueller, 2009)  Role adaption => attitude change (Jain, George, Maltarich 2009)  Recently, attitudes / motives in relation / contrast to a “taste for science” =>”taste for commercialization (Lam, 2011; Sauermann & Roach, 2012)  ‘Loose collection’ of motives, barriers & incentives w.r.t. invention disclosure (Baldini et al.,2007)  Goal: examine effects of scientists’ attitude specifically on the decision to disclose inventions at university & relative to incentives

9. 9 Theory & Prior Research: Incentives to commercialize  Motivation crowding theory: distinction between motives & incentives (e.g. Frey & Jegen, 2001; Sauermann & Cohen, 2008)  Incentives are situational and contingent on behavior  Motives are stable, trait-like and describe what on cares about  Incentives can change motivation & attitudes (crowding in / out) by changing self-determination / -esteem  Previous research has investigated specific incentives in isolation, e.g.  Royalty shares (cf. Jensen et al., 2007; Lach & Schankerman, 2008; Markman et al., 2004)  TTO, Grace period (Franzioni, 2010)  Interaction between financial motive and incentive on commercialization in general (Sauerman et al., 2010)  Goal: examine interaction effect between attitude towards invention disclosure & a full range of incentives to determine the way of crowding

10. 10 Theory & Prior Research: Scientists‘ background and experience  Publications: => opportunity for patents vs. research basicness (Azoulay et al., 2007; Calderini et al., 2007)  Prior patents => they know how to do it vs. they can do it alone or have enough (Bercovitz, Feldman, 2008)  Industrial involvement: => inspiration vs. applied research / independence from university (Agrawal & Henderson; 2002)  Other: Gender, Nationality, Tenure, Tenured (Waverly, Ding et al., 2006; Bercovitz, Feldman, 2008)  Goal: explain attitude towards invention disclosure such that these trade-offs are revealed

11. 11 Theory & Prior Research: Institutional Context  Faculty quality has been shown to have an impact on the technology transfer performance (van Looy et al, 2011; Perkmann et al, 2011)  Peer effects versus contextual effects (Azouly et al, 2009; Manski, 1993)  Social learning versus Symbolic compliance (Feldman & Bercovitz, 2008)  Goal: investigate whether attitude towards invention disclosure actually mediates contextual effects -> evidence for social learning

12. 12 Overview I. Motivation & Research Questions II. Theory & Prior Research IV. Results V. Conclusion III. Empirical Study

13. 13 Empirical study: Sample description  Online survey between December 2010 and March 2011  9 major technical universities in Germany (TU9 association)  Identification of 17,178 faculty members from engineering, naturals sciences, life sciences => e-mail invitation  1,686 (9.4%) usable responses  Excluding technical support staff => 1,408 participants,  147 (10.4%) full professors, 244 (17.3%) post docs / junior professors, and 1,017 (72.2%) research associates / PhD students  77.5% male  no significant difference between sample and invited population in terms of observable indicators gender, rank, discipline, university

14. 14 Empirical study: Sample description  To better account for different patentability across academic disciplines, we manually assigned each institute / chair to belong to one of the following categories (Jaffe, 1989; Zucker & Darby, 2006)

15. 15 Empirical study: Motives & Incentives to disclose invention  Extensive qualitative research to explore motives & incentives prior to survey:  20 interviews and 8 in-depth case studies with patent-experienced university officials and researchers at universities in the US, the UK and Germany between January and August 2008  Measuring attitudes as expectancy*value (e.g. Ajzen, 1988)  Motives are framed as beliefs about expected consequences rather than evaluations / importances (Sauermann & Roach, 2012) because of higher predictive value (e.g. Ajzen, 1988, Bagozzi, 1984; Valiquette, Valios, Desharnais, & Godin, 1988; Pieters, 1988)

16. 16 Empirical study: Measurement & descriptive results for motives  Max. correlation=0.5; max VIF=1.8; max KI=16  Cronbach α=0.86; AVE=0.43; min. loading=0.59

17. 17 Empirical study: Manipulation of Incentives  Manipulation of incentives in a scenario-based conjoint experiment  From marketing to management:  decision criteria of venture capitalists (Franke et al., 2008)  IP managers preference for protection strategies (Fischer & Henkel; 2010)  employees’ preferences for incentives to innovate (Leptien, 1995)  employees’ preferences for incentives to engage in entrepreneurship (Monsen et al., 2010)  Suffers from hypothetical bias, but also has 4 advantages:  (1) further disaggregation of incentive effects on within researcher level  (2) full range or ‘bundles’ of incentives that are not yet implemented in reality  (3) overcome potential selection bias: scientists may systematically self-select to work at ‘entrepreneurial universities’  (4) respondents have to engage in trade-offs, which reduces the threat of inflated importances obtained from Likert scales

18. 18 Empirical study: Manipulation of Incentives IncentiveLevels One-off payment for granted patents0 EUR750 EUR1.500 EUR Royalty shares to the inventor(s)30%40%50% Royalty shares to the work group0%10%20% Royalty shares to the faculty0%10%20% Granted patents count in academic assessmentsNonePatents=Publications Award for granted patentsNoneAnnual Award Location of technology transfer officeOff-campusOn-campus Grace PeriodNone12 months 4 attributes with 3 levels, 4 attributes with 2 levels => 3 4 * 2 4 = 1,296 possible combinations in a full factorial design blocking factor with 3 levels added to split the design among groups using Ngene software, we extracted a fraction of 36 conjoint scenarios, such that all main effects and selected two-way interactions could be estimated respondents were randomly assigned to a block of 12 scenarios which were in turn randomized

19. 19 Empirical study: Exemplary conjoint scenario Ratings-based instead of choice- based CA (Elrod et al., 1992) “This combination of incentives motivates me to have my work results checked for patentability and commercial usability by means of invention disclosure filings” [0=Strongly disagree; 6=Strongly agree]

20. 20 Empirical study: Data on individual background from survey & secondary sources  Survey:  Gender  Nationality  Tenure  Tenured  Industrial involvement Scale  ISI WoS: papers and citations per individual from 2005-2010  Patstat: patent applications per individual from 2005-2010:  126 (8.95%) academic inventors with 454 patents, 43 university-owned; 11 co-owned by firm

21. 21 Empirical study: Data on institutional context from secondary sources  TU9 association based on the federal statistical office:  Number of students, professors, scientifc staff for 2008  Center for University Development (CHE) – Research Ranking 2009:  Number of PhD theses, third party funds total, from DFG & industry  Patstat: number of university-owned patent applications from 2005-2010  ISI WoS: number of publications with university affiliations from 2005-2010  both assigned to academic disciplines according to concordance tables (Jaffe, 1989; Zucker & Darby, 2006)

22. 22 Empirical study: Econometric approach  Accounting for nested, multilevel data structure:  (1) Hierarchical linear model, random-effects regression:  (2) Ordered logit model with random effects:  Estimated via simulated maximum likelihood using 100 Halton draws  Interpretation of estimated cefficients via marginal effects recognizing interaction terms (cf. Ai & Norton, 2003; Greene, 2010)

23. 23 Overview I. Motivation & Research Questions II. Theory & Prior Research IV. Results V. Conclusion III. Empirical Study

24. 24 Results: Estimates on Taste

25. 25 Results: Estimates on Taste

26. 26 Results: Partial effect of taste under low incentive conditions

27. 27 Results: Partial effect of taste under high incentive conditions

28. 28 Results: Marginal effects of Incentives

29. 29 Results: Implied importance

30. 30 Overview I. Motivation & Research Questions II. Theory & Prior Research IV. Results V. Conclusion III. Empirical Study

31. 31 Conclusion  Implications  „Taste“ can be formed both by hiring the right people and culture / social learning => double benefit  Crowding-in on average, but crowding out for 25% of people with very high „taste“ => these people need special nurture & appreciation  Limitations & next, future steps  further disentangle crowding effects by incentives and (non- tenured) people  Look at mediation  Look at moderation of indivdial background effects by context  further check & improve quality of individual patent & pub data for all invited scientists  collect data on real patenting behavior (in X years)

32. 32 Thank You! Christoph Ihl TIM Group RWTH Aachen University +49 241 809 3577 ihl@tim.rwth-aachen.de tim.rwth-aachen.de/ihl