The organization of research activities in industry and academia : implications for the commercialization of university research

This dissertation is composed of three essays. In the first essay, I build a model of the choice and timing of entry into commercial activities by an academic research team, and analyze the returns and costs of these activities. I compare the behavior and performance of the academic team to an industrial research team. The two teams are assumed to differ in their objectives, governance modes, and incentive systems. I show that, while in some cases academic scientists are more reluctant to commercialize research, in other cases they may commercialize faster than profit-seeking firms would - and perform less basic research. Academic and non-academic scientists also select different projects, and this may explain the good performance of 'academic entrepreneurs' found in several empirical studies. In the light of these results, I interpret the mixed evidence on the success of, and the arguments in favor and against, the involvement of universities into business-related research activities. In the second essay, I define a model of a firm's choice of whether to conduct research in-house or to outsource it to academic research teams.

Department dc:contributor.department

Sloan School of Management.

Grantor dc:publisher

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Year dc:date.issued

2006

Author dc:creator

• Lacetera, Nicola

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• Rebecca Henderson, Robert Gibbons and Philippe Aghion.

• Sloan School of Management.

Statement dc:rights

• M.I.T. theses are protected by copyright. They may be viewed from this source for any purpose, but reproduction or distribution in any format is prohibited without written permission. See provided URL for inquiries about permission.

Licence dc:rights.uri

• http://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/7582

Language dc:language.iso

eng

Handle dc:identifier.uri

http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/37113

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:dspace.mit.edu:1721.1/37113