Elsevier

Technovation

Volumes 90–91, February–March 2020, 102100
Technovation

The role of university Knowledge Transfer Offices: Not just commercialize research outputs!

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.technovation.2019.102100Get rights and content

Highlights

  • Paper examines the relationship between Third Mission routines and community knowledge transfer performance.

  • Commercialization routines show different effects on community knowledge transfer performance.

  • Non-commercialization routines are positively associated with community knowledge transfer activities.

Abstract

While there is a prevailing rich body of studies on the role of university knowledge transfer office (KTO) in the commercialization process as part of the Third Mission, research on its role in community engagement activities is relatively neglected, even as funding agencies and policy makers conceive these as instrumental to sustaining social and economic development. This article focuses on the role of university KTO in supporting, facilitating or undertaking Third Mission community engagement activities. Drawing on data from the annual Higher Education Business and Community Interaction survey for the years 2007–2012, this paper empirically explores the relationship between a range of Third Mission activities by university KTO and performance of three key business-community services – provision of consultancy, provision of continuous professional development courses (CPD), and leasing of facilities and equipment (FE). It emerges that the routines of developing strategic plan and creating spin-off are positively associated with all types of community knowledge transfer (CKT) activities. Further, the routines of establishing partnerships with local and regional bodies, and licensing are positively related to CPD and FE, respectively. The article is concluded with implications for theory, practice, policy, and suggestions for future research.

Introduction

Higher Education Institutions (HEIs), or universities, have two main missions, historically: research and teaching, the outputs of which have helped to contribute to economic and social development. In the last 30 years or so, starting with the UK and followed by the Netherlands and Scandinavian countries (Geuna and Muscio, 2009) and now throughout Europe, “Third Mission” activities have increasingly become a significant activity undertaken by HEIs (Grimaldi et al., 2011). Yet these had struggled to be “core” even as academics have conducted them informally or sporadically. Still, governments, worldwide, have growingly recognized that the contributions of these activities to the wider society merit more recognition and support by “Third Stream” funding (Kalar and Antoncic, 2015; Rasmussen, 2008). Against a range of policy support initiatives Third Mission activities have now become organized in HEIs. Third mission activities are those “mainly concerned with the generation, use, application and exploitation of knowledge and other university capabilities outside academic environments. In other words, Third Mission is about interactions between universities and the rest of society” (Molas-Gallart et al., 2002, p. 2).

All these activities, in varying degree, are conducted, mediated and facilitated by Knowledge Transfer Offices (KTOs, a generic label for HEI units). While studies of university knowledge transfer have so far focused on the commercialization process of academic research (e.g. Huyghe et al., 2016; Wu et al., 2015; Weckowska, 2015), it is increasingly acknowledged that research commercialization (through conventional indicators such as patents, licenses, and spinoffs) is narrow and cannot represent a complete landscape of knowledge transfer by HEIs (e.g. Hayter2018; Hughes and Kitson, 2012; Langford et al., 2006; Rossi, 2018). Langford et al. (2006) suggest that proxies of knowledge transfer should measure all other important paths of knowledge transfer, such as information exchange and technical assistance. More recent studies (e.g. Rossi, 2018; Sengupta and Ray, 2017) use a broader range of indicators beyond patenting, licensing, and formation of spin-off. Rossi (2018) includes contract research, consultancy, and continuous professional development courses in his conceptual model. Sengupta and Ray (2017) discussed alternative knowledge transfer channels such as contract research, collaborative research, and consultancy. However, neither of these studies have examined the role of KTO in business and community services (e.g. consultancy, continuous professional development, and facilities and equipment) in detail. This article aims to contribute to this perceived gap.

This article focuses on the role of the KTO in facilitating or undertaking Third Mission activities, which is referred to, for the purposes of this paper, as community knowledge transfer (CKT). As will be shown below, CKT is made up of a wide range of activities, some of which are income-generating and contribute materially to the income that HEIs receive. To address the relative neglect of the role of the KTO in CKT, this article aims to explore the relationship between a range of KTO Third Mission activities and the performance of these three CKT reported income-generating activities: consultancy, continuous professional development and training, and the leasing of equipment and facilities. These three activities are selected because the annual Higher Education Business and Community Interaction survey (HE-BCI, more below) that all UK HEIs must submit to the Higher Education Funding Council of England (HEFCE) annually consider them as key income-producing community engagement activities. Funding agencies conceive these as helping to sustain social and economic development. The exploration of the role of the KTO in these activities is undertaken through quantile regression.

This article is partly motivated by an observation in which some scholars contend that community engagement activities are not systematically collected by universities and therefore render it more difficult to obtain a more comprehensive view of Third Mission community engagement activities. This article is further motivated by a suggestion by Perkmann et al. (2013) who conclude that there is no conclusive evidence of the kinds of organizational support for academic entrepreneurship. It is inferred from observation that continuous professional development (CPD), for instance, can potentially expand the opportunities for the use of academic research and into the industrial domain. Similarly, facilities and equipment (FE) may also indirectly contribute to financial benefits via “an increase in reputation, prestige, influence or societal benefits that result in additional research funding and/or increased demand for university teaching” (Abreu and Grivinivich, 2013, p. 410). Molas-Gallart et al. (2002, p. 6) also suggest that “exploitation of research outputs (one of the elements of Third Stream) depends on quality innovative research being carried out (Second Stream), students are often active in research and therefore Second Stream performance will benefit from quality teaching (First Stream); good innovative research is also likely to have a positive impact on the quality of teaching, and so on”. Perhaps one could adduce the objective of this article to Bozeman and Sarewitz's (2011) concept of “public value,” which the authors advance that the evaluation of science policy is too focused on economic productivity.

Further supporting the objective is the conclusion by Feller et al. (2002, p. 8), who suggest that it is important to open the “black box of KTOs” to find out how they influence and mediate the entrepreneurial outputs reported in various public reports. Here too the focus is on the commercialization of academic research, which may be explained by the Bayh-Dole Act 1980, which transferred the ownership rights (Intellectual Property Rights) of academic research formerly held by the U.S. Federal funding agencies to the university. It invariably encouraged the commercialization of research results and this helped to spawn the creation of university technology transfer offices across the country (Mowery et al., 2001).

As noted above the role of KTOs in the Third Mission largely focuses on the commercialization process. Here, this article presents a somewhat necessarily selective overview of the studies on this role given the surfeit of studies on this topic. For instance, Wu et al. (2015) assess the impact of KTO's cost-saving practices and service effectiveness on likelihood of licensing. Weckowska (2015) examines how leaning processes (i.e. transaction- and relationship-focused practices) of KTOs affect their commercialization performance. Chapple et al. (2005), Siegel et al. (2007), and Curi et al. (2012) examine the KTO's role in patenting, licensing and the formation of spin-offs. Bercovitz et al. (2001) study the KTO structure as a determinant of academic patenting and licensing. Di Gregorio and Shane (2003) examine the activities of the KTO in the commercialization process. Others such as Macho-Stadler et al. (2007) explore the role and effectiveness of the KTO in licensing. Jain and George (2007) discuss the role of the KTO as an institutional entrepreneur by analyzing the commercialization activities of the Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation. Lockett and Wright (2005) and Siegel et al. (2003a) on the skills and resources for the transfer of technology.

Siegel, Waldman and Link (2003b) assess the effectiveness of KTOs in providing institutional support in technology transfer and Decter et al. (2007) write on the motivations and policies of KTOs for commercialization. Meyer and Tang (2007) explore how KTOs deal with perceived “valuable” patents and find that the majority of university patent applications are filed via the Patent Cooperation Treaty process. Geuna and Muscio (2009) discuss the institutionalization and governance of knowledge transfer activities as an element of the Third Mission but here too the emphasis is on the creation of spinoffs. Here, the authors show that while the entrepreneurial activities of the Third Mission have been informally conducted by academics, it was only through the creation of KTOs that these activities became a formal (institutionalized) HEI activity. In the late 1980 and 1990s, European countries had begun to establish KTOs and their initial focus was on the commercialization of academic research. It was in the early 2000s, particularly after the European Union Lisbon Agenda 2000 that societal benefits became an additional objective of European Union funded research programs.

Rasmussen and Borch (2010) examine university capabilities in fostering and facilitating entrepreneurship through a longitudinal study of spin-offs. Their focus, however, is less on the KTO than it is on the university infrastructure and incentives to promote the enterprising culture. Weckowska (2015) through cases studies explains how KTOs learn to improve their commercialization practices, one of which is through training provided by KTO networks, such as PRAXIS. These comprehensive studies and the relative paucity of similarly well-examined studies on the community engagement activities of KTOs highlight a perceptible gap and which has further motivated the authors to write this paper.

This article adds to existing research by providing a finer-grained landscape of Third Mission activities by investigating an under-studied dimension. To do this the authors depart from the prevailing narrow focus of KTO's “entrepreneurial” activities and analyze instead the “non-entrepreneurial” ones – CKT. The authors seek to explain the landscape of CKT activities carried out by British HEIs.

Finally, the findings are policy relevant. With universities increasingly facing budgetary constraints from the public purse and continually facing challenges for research funding, and if developing Third Mission activities help HEIs to be more “self-reliant” (Yokoyama, 2006), then the role of KTOs become even more instrumental. As HEIs will likely continue to experience changes that will affect their sources of funding (for instance, in the UK, the newly introduced Teaching Excellence Framework in addition to the Research Excellence Framework), objectives/policies and modes of operation, university administrators will want to know what KTO support areas are performing well and where they may not be, given that the allocation of Third Stream funding is much dependent on the “impact/value” of the Third Mission income-generating activities. This in turn, could contribute to identifying additional resources or training, or both, to help to optimize KTO organizational support across these activities. For policy makers and funding agencies, they would arguably like to be better informed on how the social benefits of community engagement from their various Third Stream funding schemes are provided and/or may be improved.

Section snippets

Third Mission and Third Stream funding in the UK

There is a rich vein of literature on the purposes of Third Mission and Third Stream funding of universities, which is beyond the remit of this paper. Instead, as this paper is based on the UK data, it offers a potted view of some of the policies on Third Stream funding by the British Government to support the Third Mission of its universities. The 2000 White Paper on Excellence and Opportunity: A Science and Innovation Policy for the 21st Century proclaimed HEIs as the “dynamos of innovation” (

A capability approach to Third Mission activities

The concept of capabilities is employed as the analytical focus to unpack the role of the KTO by considering the range of Third Mission activities as presented in the HE-BCI survey. Existing studies consider capabilities composed of routines and processes (e.g. Collis, 1994; Eisenhardt and Martin, 2000; Nelson and Winter 1982; Teece et al., 1994). For instance, Eisenhardt and Martin (2000, p. 1107) define “dynamic capabilities” as “strategic and organizational processes and routines”. Teece,

Data source

As discussed previously, the data used in the empirical analysis of this paper are drawn on the HE-BCI survey, which is administered by HEFCE (then Higher Education Statistical Agency - HESA) annually to collect qualitative and quantitative data on the Third Mission activities undertaken by British universities. The survey consists of two parts. Part A of the survey returns qualitative data on six broad areas of Third Stream activities: ‘Strategy’; ‘Infrastructure’; ‘Intellectual Property’

Results

From Table 6, Table 7, Table 8, it is clear that while licensing (LnLicense) by KTO is positively linked to FE income distribution for all quantiles, it is negatively associated with consultancy and CPD performance for the 50th, and 50th – 90th quantiles, respectively. The positive association between licensing and FE performance is likely that the efficiency in generating licensing agreements is determined by the knowledge stock the HEI possesses.

Regarding creating spin-off (LnSpinoff), the

Implications for theory

A large body of academic literature has focused on the determinants and economic consequences of commercialization, which includes patenting, licensing, and spin-off creation. This study departures from mainstream research and looks at commercialization as well as non-commercialization activities as enabler of generating societal benefits. This article raises questions regarding the type of routines undertaken by KTOs to be effective in community knowledge transfer. The findings of this study

Conclusion

To reiterate the goal of this paper, it is to expand the paucity of studies on the role of KTOs in community engagement activities by exploring the relationship between selected Third Mission routines and the performance of CKT activities (measured by income generated from consultancy, CPD, and FE). To shed light on this topic, a panel quantile regression approach is employed to control for unobserved heterogeneity and the distributions of Consultancy, CPD, and FE income. Drawing together the

Acknowledgement

The original version of this paper was developed by Ruoying Zhou and Puay Tang. The authors worked closely on the paper until the sad event of Puay's death in December 2018, which was during the first-round stage of revision and resubmission. Thereafter, Ruoying Zhou completed the final version of this paper, and she would like to thank two anonymous reviewers and the editors for their constructive comments. An earlier version of this paper is also benefited from helpful suggestions of Alberto

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