The Influence of University Research on Industrial Innovation

Jinyoung Kim, Sangjoon John Lee and Gerald Marschke

No 11447, NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc

Abstract: We use U.S. patent records to examine the role of research personnel as a pathway for the diffusion of ideas from university to industry. Appearing on a patent assigned to a university is evidence that an inventor has been exposed to university research, either directly as a university researcher or through some form of collaboration with university researchers. Having an advanced degree is another indicator of an inventor's exposure to university research. We find a steady increase in industry's use of inventors with university research experience over the period 1985-97, economy wide and in the pharmaceutical and semiconductor industries in particular. We interpret this as evidence of growth in the influence of university research on industrial innovation. Moreover, during this period we find that firms with large research operations in both industries, and young and highly capitalized firms in the pharmaceutical industry, are disproportionately active in the diffusion of ideas from the university sector. Finally, we find that the patents of firms that employ inventors with university research experience are more likely to cite university patents as prior art, suggesting that this experience better enables firms to tap academic research.

JEL-codes: J62 O31 O33 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2005-07
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-ent, nep-ino and nep-tid
Note: PR
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (19)

Published as Gerald Marschke, 2006. "The influence of university research on industrial innovation," Proceedings, Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland.

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.nber.org/papers/w11447.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Working Paper: The Influence of University Research on Industrial Innovation (2010)
Journal Article: The influence of university research on industrial innovation (2006)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:nbr:nberwo:11447

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
http://www.nber.org/papers/w11447

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc National Bureau of Economic Research, 1050 Massachusetts Avenue Cambridge, MA 02138, U.S.A.. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by ().