Revisiting the Entrepreneurial Commercialization of Academic Science: Evidence from “Twin” Discoveries

Matt Marx and David H. Hsu

No 28203, NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc

Abstract: Which factors shape the commercialization of academic scientific discoveries via startup formation? Prior literature has identified several contributing factors but does not address the fundamental problem that the commercial potential of a nascent discovery is generally unobserved, which potentially confounds inference. We construct a sample of approximately 20,000 “twin” scientific articles, which allows us to hold constant differences in the nature of the advance and more precisely examine characteristics that predict startup commercialization. In this framework, several commonly-accepted factors appear not to influence commercialization. However, we find that teams of academic scientists whose former collaborators include “star” serial entrepreneurs are much more likely to commercialize their own discoveries via startups, as are more interdisciplinary teams of scientists.

JEL-codes: L26 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020-12
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-ent and nep-sog
Note: PR
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Published as Matt Marx & David H. Hsu, 2022. "Revisiting the Entrepreneurial Commercialization of Academic Science: Evidence from “Twin” Discoveries," Management Science, vol 68(2), pages 1330-1352.

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.nber.org/papers/w28203.pdf (application/pdf)

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:nbr:nberwo:28203

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
http://www.nber.org/papers/w28203

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc National Bureau of Economic Research, 1050 Massachusetts Avenue Cambridge, MA 02138, U.S.A.. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by ().