Foreword

This book addresses the managerial and policy implications of an important trend: the rise in the rate of technology commercialization at universities. While many scholars have analyzed university patenting and licensing, some researchers have assessed the entrepreneurial dimension of university technology transfer (e.g., startup formation). According to the Association of University Technology Managers (AUTM), the number of startup firms at U.S. universities rose from 35 in 1980 to 705 in 2012. This increase in entrepreneurial activity at research universities has attracted considerable attention in the academic literature. This volume constitutes a major advance in the analysis of academic entrepreneurship. It contains numerous illuminating case studies of private and public research universities, based on economic, sociological, and organizational perspectives, yielding important new global evidence on how research universities have stimulated academic entrepreneurship. Based on this evidence, the editors draw important conclusions on how to enhance this activity. As an economist, I tend to focus on the importance of incentives, in terms of inducing academics to be entrepreneurial. However, the book reveals that cultural and organizational factors are also critical.