Title: A career in innovation: serial faculty inventors

Authors: Anne W. Fuller

Addresses: College of Business Administration, Sacramento State University, USA

Abstract: This paper explores the invention patterns of 349 science and engineering faculty in US universities. The work builds upon existing life cycle models to empirically test the idea that academic consulting is more likely to occur later in the career span of such researchers. We also test for the impact of university environmental factors such as the presence of technology transfer offices. Using a novel transition probability method paired with econometric modelling we find strong support for academic consulting to yield staying power and to occur later in a faculty member's career. We also find support for licensing revenues to encourage university research while the presence of a transfer office was not significant in our analysis.

Keywords: academic inventors; faculty consulting; human capital.

DOI: 10.1504/IJTTC.2017.084645

International Journal of Technology Transfer and Commercialisation, 2017 Vol.15 No.1, pp.97 - 118

Received: 21 Jan 2017
Accepted: 06 Feb 2017
Published online: 19 Jun 2017 *

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