TY - JOUR
T1 - Great expectations
T2 - assessing the impact of commercialization-focused policies among Malaysia’s public research institutes
AU - Strong, Derek R.
AU - Chandran, V. G.R.
AU - Hayter, Christopher
N1 - Funding Information:
We would like to acknowledge the financial support provided by University of Malaya under the Equitable Society Research Cluster (ESRC) research grant RP022A-15SBS.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2017, © 2017 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group.
PY - 2018/8/18
Y1 - 2018/8/18
N2 - In 2006, the Malaysian government released its 9th five-year development plan which, among other things, directed the country’s numerous public research institutes (PRIs) to focus primarily on commercializing technologies stemming from their respective research agendas. This directive envisioned a de facto division of labor between universities, that would emphasize basic research, and PRIs, that would become Malaysia’s translational research and technology commercialization hubs. Employing a scientific and technical human capital conceptual lens, this paper assesses the extent to which PRIs have met the expectations of the new commercialization directive through the analysis of data collected during a 2011–2012 survey among university and PRI researchers. First, we find descriptively that, in comparison to university researchers, PRI researchers do not differ substantially in terms of average patents and prototypes produced, our proxies for technology commercialization. Second, we investigate factors among PRI researchers that explain commercialization behavior and find that holding a PhD correlates strongly with publication and patenting behavior while conducting applied research and expressing adequate commercialization support correlates modestly with prototyping behavior. Implications for research and policy are discussed.
AB - In 2006, the Malaysian government released its 9th five-year development plan which, among other things, directed the country’s numerous public research institutes (PRIs) to focus primarily on commercializing technologies stemming from their respective research agendas. This directive envisioned a de facto division of labor between universities, that would emphasize basic research, and PRIs, that would become Malaysia’s translational research and technology commercialization hubs. Employing a scientific and technical human capital conceptual lens, this paper assesses the extent to which PRIs have met the expectations of the new commercialization directive through the analysis of data collected during a 2011–2012 survey among university and PRI researchers. First, we find descriptively that, in comparison to university researchers, PRI researchers do not differ substantially in terms of average patents and prototypes produced, our proxies for technology commercialization. Second, we investigate factors among PRI researchers that explain commercialization behavior and find that holding a PhD correlates strongly with publication and patenting behavior while conducting applied research and expressing adequate commercialization support correlates modestly with prototyping behavior. Implications for research and policy are discussed.
KW - Innovation policy
KW - Malaysia
KW - human capital
KW - public research institutions
KW - research productivity
KW - social networks
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U2 - 10.1080/10438599.2017.1374043
DO - 10.1080/10438599.2017.1374043
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:85029722857
SN - 1043-8599
VL - 27
SP - 438
EP - 453
JO - Economics of Innovation and New Technology
JF - Economics of Innovation and New Technology
IS - 5-6
ER -