Title: Technology incubators: facilitating technology transfer or creating regional wealth?

Authors: Andrew Maxwell, Moren Levesque

Addresses: Canadian Innovation Centre, 295 Hagey Blvd. Waterloo, Ontario N2L 6R5, Canada. ' Department of Operations Management and Information Systems, Schulich School of Business, York University, 4700 Keele Street, Toronto, Ontario, M3J 1P3, Canada

Abstract: Universities are increasingly under pressure to commercialise their technological innovation and generate revenues to justify ongoing public investment to support that innovation. Most universities respond to this pressure by focusing on licencing patentable technologies. However, as most licensees operate far from the universities, the local economic impact is reduced. Due to this factor, regional economic development agencies, when looking to extract commercial value from university research, see limited benefit from the licencing of technology patents generated by universities. Instead, they concentrate on promoting new business ventures as a mechanism for regional wealth creation. We propose an expanded model of knowledge transfer from university research that underscores the importance of creating new ventures and demonstrates how university-based incubators can catalyse knowledge extraction and, as a result, align the goals of regional economic development agencies and universities.

Keywords: technological innovation; technology incubators; technology transfer; knowledge transfer; venture creation; wealth creation; regional wealth; university commercialisation; economic development; licencing; universities; university research; knowledge extraction; regional development agencies.

DOI: 10.1504/IJEIM.2011.038855

International Journal of Entrepreneurship and Innovation Management, 2011 Vol.13 No.2, pp.122 - 143

Published online: 30 Sep 2014 *

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