Strategic timing of academic commercialism: evidence from technology transfer

Seongkyoon Jeong and Sungki Lee ()

The Journal of Technology Transfer, 2015, vol. 40, issue 6, 910-931

Abstract: While the markets for technology have received considerable attention because of the contribution to management and economy, universities and government research institutes have risen as important providers of technology. Their early licensing agreements may contribute to enhancing the licensor’s productivity, the licensee’s competency, and the efficiency of national innovation system. However, later licensing agreements enhance the licensor’s bargaining power. Thus, the timing of licensing is not only a policy consideration at the national level but also a key strategic consideration at the R&D entity level. We first theoretically claim that the ability to “invent around” determines the impact of uncertainty attenuation on the timing of licensing on the condition of market friction. Based on this claim, the paper argues that technology transfers from public research organizations differ from inter-firm licensing transactions in regard to their timing patterns. Using the data of commercialization activity through national R&D programs in South Korea, we empirically find that resolving uncertainties rather delays the licensing time for technology transfers, as opposed to inter-firm transactions. In addition, our findings provide evidence of frictions related to search costs associated with the unique nature of R&D processes in public research organizations. Copyright Springer Science+Business Media New York 2015

Keywords: Technology commercialization; Technology licensing; Timing of licensing; Intellectual property rights; D230; O310; O340 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2015
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1007/s10961-015-9424-9 (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:kap:jtecht:v:40:y:2015:i:6:p:910-931

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.springer. ... nt/journal/10961/PS2

DOI: 10.1007/s10961-015-9424-9

Access Statistics for this article

The Journal of Technology Transfer is currently edited by Albert N. Link, Donald S. Siegel, Barry Bozeman and Simon Mosey

More articles in The Journal of Technology Transfer from Springer
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().