Quality of research as source and signal: revisiting the valorization process beyond substitution vs complementarity

Abstract

In recent years, the growing interest of universities in valorization of research activities (tipically through technology transfer—patenting and licensing—and academic entrepreneurship) has generated a debate on its impact on scientific knowledge production. There have been controversies on the potentially negative effect of university research valorization on public research, in terms of quality, long term vs short term orientation, and accessibility. The debate has been traditionally framed in terms of substitution vs complementarity between public research and valorization. In this paper we argue that the key to understand the relation between public research and valorization lies in the role of research funding, particularly: (a) competitive public research funding; (b) third party commercial funding. If the funding system (both public and private) takes the value of academic research as signal of quality, then high quality researchers are able to attract extra-funds beyond ordinary endowment. In turn, these additional funds can be used as a source to organize an effective and long-term division of labor in laboratories in order to support inventions and licensing (patents) and entrepreneurial activities (spin-off companies). In this case academic quality and commercialization are strong complement and positive feedback loops are generated. This interpretation on the role of funding is strongly supported by original data from the Italian Evaluation of Research Quality VQR 2011–2014 dataset. The paper is based on a unique and novel dataset, that integrates data on valorization of research activities at individual and institutional level on all the Italian universities and microdata on research quality on 32,616 researchers in STEM disciplines.

Do funding sources complement or substitute? Examining the impact of cancer research publications

“…Blume-Kohout et al (2009) provided similar evidence of complementarity by examining federal and nonfederal funding in life sciences for U.S. universities, while Muscio et al (2013) found that government funding to Italian universities complements funding received from private actors in terms of research contracts and consulting activities. This suggests that external sponsors can interpret internal/public funding as a signal of research quality, an argument that is also supported by recent evidence from Bonaccorsi et al (2021) on the positive relationship between research quality and its valorization (i.e., patents and spin-off companies) in the case of the Italian Evaluation of Research Quality VQR (2011)(2012)(2013)(2014).…”

Barriers to academic collaboration with industry and community: Individual and organisational factors

“…According to Fini et al (2017) non-state universities have greater institutional autonomy and are less constrained in their technology transfer activities. Others have found that state universities have greater success when it comes to commercially viable outputs (Bonaccorsi et al, 2021) because private universities may be more teaching-oriented with less emphasis on either research or TM activities (de la Torre et al, 2017). Previous research has shown that universities of applied sciences are more engaged in regional knowledge transfer than regular universities (Jaeger and Kopper, 2014).…”

“…Previous research has shown that universities of applied sciences are more engaged in regional knowledge transfer than regular universities (Jaeger and Kopper, 2014). Additionally, universities can be distinguished into generalist and specialist universities where generalist universities have better conditions for commercialisation due to higher internal collaboration between different scientific disciplines, such as interaction between STEM and social sciences and humanities (SSH) (Bonaccorsi et al, 2021; Giuri et al, 2019). As for location, knowledge transfer is more likely when industry and universities are in close geographic proximity (Wang et al, 2013).…”