A Taste for Patents … at University?The Role of University Scientists‘ Attitude Towards Invention Disclosure

“Scientists and Inventors” WorkshopLeuven, 11.05.2012

Christoph Ihl, Thomas Walter, Jan ReerinkTechnology & Innovation Management GroupRWTH Aachen

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Overview

I. Motivation & Research QuestionsII. Theory & Prior Research

IV. Results

V. Discussion & Conclusion

III. Empirical Study

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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…

Research Questions: „Taste for Patents with University?“ …

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… 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?

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Overview

I. Motivation & Research QuestionsII. Theory & Prior Research

IV. Results

V. Discussion & Conclusion

III. Empirical Study

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Research framework

InventionDisclosure

Incentives

Taste

Institutional Context

IndividualBackground

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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)

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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

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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

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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

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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

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Overview

I. Motivation & Research QuestionsII. Theory & Prior Research

IV. Results

V. Conclusion

III. Empirical Study

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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

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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)

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Empirical study: Motives & Incentives to disclose invention

Extensive qualitative research to explore motives & incentivesprior 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)

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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

Category ItemMean Profs

Mean Postdocs

Mean PhC cand.

Constraints in topics

Constraints in disclosureConstraints in time

Applicable results

Contribution to public

Reputation

Career perspectives

Access to experts

Access to funding

Personal incomeMoney

… require a shift in my research agenda (reverse)

… require a delay for the publication of my research results. (reverse)

… require additional effort that keeps me from doing research. (reverse)

Autonomy

Recognition

3,40

4,07

4,96

"I expect that filing an invention disclosure to have my work examined for patentability and commercial usability will …"

… ensure that my results applied in actual products and services.

… ensure that my results make a contribution to public.

… lead to higher reputation among my colleagues.

… improve my carrear opportunities.

… lead to contacts with experts in commercialzing the invention.

… lead to additonal funds for my unit.

… lead to a financial benefit for me.

4,10 4,51

4,51 4,97

4,84 5,16

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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

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Empirical study: Manipulation of Incentives

Incentive Levels

One-off payment for granted patents 0 EUR 750 EUR 1.500 EUR

Royalty shares to the inventor(s) 30% 40% 50%

Royalty shares to the work group 0% 10% 20%

Royalty shares to the faculty 0% 10% 20%

Granted patents count in academic assessments None Patents=Publications

Award for granted patents None Annual Award

Location of technology transfer office Off-campus On-campus

Grace Period None 12 months

• 4 attributes with 3 levels, 4 attributes with 2 levels• => 34 * 24 = 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

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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]

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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

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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)

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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)

𝑇𝐴𝑆𝑇𝐸 𝑖 𝑓❑ =𝛼+𝜷 ′ 𝑰𝑵𝑫 𝒊 𝒇 +𝜸 ′𝑪𝑶𝑵 𝒇 +𝜔 𝑓 +𝜀𝑖 𝑓

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Overview

I. Motivation & Research QuestionsII. Theory & Prior Research

IV. Results

V. Conclusion

III. Empirical Study

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Results: Estimates on Taste

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Results: Estimates on Taste

Simulation of L inear Regress ion Function

LN_PATS

4.50

5.00

5.50

6.00

6.50

7.00

7.50

4.001 2 3 40

Avg.P.E. Lower CL Upper CL

Ave

rag

e S

imu

late

d F

un

ctio

n V

alu

e

Simulation of L inear Regres s ion Function

LN_PUB

4.20

4.40

4.60

4.80

5.00

5.20

4.001 2 3 4 5 60

Avg.P.E. Lower CL Upper CL

Ave

rag

e S

imu

late

d F

un

ctio

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alu

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Simulation of L inear Regress ion Function

IIN

4.40

4.50

4.60

4.70

4.80

4.90

5.00

5.10

5.20

4.30.11 .22 .33 .44 .56 .67 .78 .89 1.00.00

Avg.P.E. Lower CL Upper CL

Ave

rag

e S

imu

late

d F

un

ctio

n V

alu

e

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Results: Partial effect of taste under low incentive conditions

Partial Effects of ATT_ DIR

ATT_DIR

.0010

.0016

.0021

.0027

.0033

.00052 3 4 5 6 71

Avg.P.E. Lower CL Upper CL

Par

tial

Eff

ects

Wit

h R

esp

ect

To

AT

T_D

IR

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Results: Partial effect of taste under high incentive conditions

Partial Effects of ATT_ DIR

ATT_DIR

-.0750

-.0500

-.0250

.0000

.0250

.0500

.0750

.1000

.1250

-.10002 3 4 5 6 71

Avg.P.E. Lower CL Upper CL

Par

tial

Eff

ects

Wit

h R

esp

ect

To

AT

T_D

IR

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Results: Marginal effects of Incentives

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Results: Implied importance

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Overview

I. Motivation & Research QuestionsII. Theory & Prior Research

IV. Results

V. Conclusion

III. Empirical Study

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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)

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Thank You!

Christoph IhlTIM Group RWTH Aachen University

+49 241 809 3577ihl@tim.rwth-aachen.detim.rwth-aachen.de/ihl