Entrepreneurship and Innovation Today

Free audio-6th West Coast Research Symposium on Technology Entrepreneurship

FREE AUDIO DOWNLOADS NOW AVAILABLE!

6TH WEST COAST RESEARCH SYMPOSIUM ON TECHNOLOGY ENTREPRENEURSHIP

SEPTEMBER 5TH AND 6TH, 2008

Stanford Technology Ventures Program (Stanford University), The Center for Innovation and Entrepreneurship (University of Washington), Lloyd Greif Center for Entrepreneurial Studies (USC), Lundquist Center for Entrepreneurship (University of Oregon), Beall Center (University of California - Irvine) and the Kauffman Foundation.

We are pleased to announce the FREE availability of the audio portion of the recent WCRS conference at Stanford University that featured over 25 of the latest and best research working papers on technology innovation and entrepreneurship from scholars around the world.  The conference program is attached.

Please click on http://stvp.stanford.edu/research/wcrs_audio.html to download one or more presentations or discussant comments.  ENJOY!

CfP's Technology Transfer: The Practice and the Profession 3-4 December, 2008 Rotterdam School of Management, Erasmus University Rotterdam, the Netherlands

Call for Papers

Technology Transfer: The Practice and the Profession 3-4 December, 2008 Rotterdam School of Management, Erasmus University Rotterdam, the Netherlands

There is plethora evidence that gains from successful technology transfer positively affect markets and societies at various levels (Shane & Stuart, 2002; Slaughter & Leslie, 1997; Zucker et al.,1998). Technology transfer, in this context, is the process through which knowledge, products or processes are transferred from one organization to another for business benefit (e.g. Wittamore et al., 1998). Indeed, the study of technology transfer is not new; however, recent years have witnessed the emergence of a new profession often referred to as technology transfer professionals. Technology transfer professionals apply various skills to accomplish a technology transfer activity. Past studies have already hinted about several competencies required by individuals and organizations to support technology transfer activities. For example, possessing legal competencies to ensure the appropriation of value created by the technology originator (Colyvas, 2007); marketing and negotiation competencies (Horng and Hsueh, Sep 2005); team work competencies (Large et al., 2000); innovation competencies (Markman et al., 2005); and knowledge management competencies (Gorman, 2002). Indeed, based on past studies, the breath of competencies an organization should develop and possess is rather wide and diverse. This conference is designed to revisit the relevant literature and explore new technology transfer practices and skills in light of the emergence of the profession of technology transfer. In particular, the conference will seek to discuss the various contexts within which technology transfer takes place and the competencies, skills and practices developed as a result. Among such contexts are: - technology transfer between different legal entities (e.g. universities to profit-orientated organizations) - technology transfer between different geographical areas (e.g. Europe, USA and Far East) - Technology transfer between different industries (e.g. research to consumer electronics) With the consideration of such contexts, we seek to understand which skills are imperative at the individual level and how such skills are translated into organizational competencies, practices and performance. Similarly, we seek to understand which skills are contracted out and how such an approach affect organizational competencies, processes and performance. The conference is designed to bring together insights from research, practice and policy making at various levels. In particular, we seek to stimulate a discussion following the results and the conclusion of the EC CERT-TTT-M project, which will be presented during the conference. We invite papers from researchers, policy makers, practitioners and advisers that investigate the emergence of the technology transfer profession and its impact on technology transfer practices and organization performance. Some themes that are of particular interest in this conference are: - Which skills are imperative for technology transfer at the individual and organizational level? - How various contexts change the importance of technology transfer skills at the individual level and the competencies at the organizational level? - Does the formation of the technology transfer profession shape and affect the technology transfer practices and competences at the organizational level? And if so, how? - What factors explain the relationship between technology transfer skills and organizational performance? - Do policy makers affect the formation of the technology transfer profession and if so, how? We are interested in submissions that are both conceptual and empirically-based representing the application of various theoretical lenses to explain the relationships between technology transfer skills, organizational competencies and organizational performance. Submission guidelines: Please submit your extended abstract (5 pages, font 12, double spaced) to Patricia de Wilde-Mes ([email protected]) no later than September 15th 2008 by 17:00 CET. Authors will be notified whether their abstract was accepted by September 26th 2008. Authors of selected abstracts from the conference will be invited to submit a full paper for an edited book and a special issue in an international journal. Additional information about registration, accommodations and the location can be found on: http://www.rsm.nl/home/faculty/academic_departments/strategic_management

Organizing Committee: Prof. Henk Volberda Dr. Ilan Oshri Dr. Tom Mom

Determinants of knowledge transfer: evidence from Canadian university researchers in natural sciences and engineering

Determinants of knowledge transfer: evidence from Canadian university researchers in natural sciences and engineering

Réjean Landry, Nabil Amara, Mathieu Ouimet.  Journal of Technology Transfer.  Indianapolis: Dec 2007.  Vol.  32, Iss.  6; pg.  561, 32 pgs

Abstract (Summary)

This paper addresses three questions: First, what is the extent of research transfer in natural sciences and engineering among Canadian university researchers?  Second, are there differences between various disciplines with regard to the extent of this transfer?  And third, what are the determinants of research transfer?

To answer these questions, the paper begins by differentiating between technology transfer and knowledge transfer.  It then identifies the individual researcher as the unit of analysis of this study and introduces a conceptual framework derived from the resource-based approach of firms.  The paper then reviews the literature on each of the factors included in the conceptual framework, beginning with the dependent variable, knowledge transfer.  The conceptual framework includes four categories of resources and one category of research attributes that are likely to influence knowledge transfer.  Based on a survey of 1,554 researchers funded by the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC), comparisons of means of research transfer across research fields were conducted.  Multivariate regression analyses were used to identify the determinants of research transfer by research field.  The results of these analyses indicate that researchers transferred knowledge much more actively when no commercialization was involved than when there was commercialization of protected intellectual property.  This paper thus adds to the relatively scarce evidence about knowledge transfer by examining knowledge transfer from a broader perspective than strict commercialization.  The findings of this paper are also interesting for other reasons.  We obtained statistical evidence indicating that researchers in certain research fields were much more active in knowledge transfer than those in other fields, thereby pointing to differences in levels of knowledge activities across research fields.  Furthermore, we obtained evidence showing that only two determinants explained knowledge transfer in all the six research fields considered in this study, namely, focus of research projects on users' needs, and linkages between researchers and research users.  Statistical evidence obtained indicates that the other determinants that influence knowledge transfer vary from one research field to another, thus suggesting that different policies would be required to increase knowledge transfer in different research fields.  The last part of the paper outlines the implications of the regression results for theory building, public policy and future research.

Predicting the impacts of any new technology

"The telephone is a fantastic invention & I'm sure every city will get one."

The above quote seems funny, almost childish in hindsight, but illustrates the difficulty in anticipating the consequences and impacts of a new-to-the-world  technology and its range of applications.

To be fair, at the time the telephone market was very new & immature. Why didn't Western Union, the incumbent technology leader at the time see the potential of the telephone over the telegraph? When Western Union infamously declined to purchase Alexander Graham Bell's telephone patents for $100,000, their highest-profit market was long-distance telegraphy.  Telephones were only useful for very local calls.  Short-distance telegraphy barely existed as a market segment, if at all.  So Western Union's decision was quite understandable at the time.

The Swedish Technology Foresight Project  did a "technology hindsight" study looking back at earlier attempts at predicting technology futures called Technisk Baksyn (Technology Hindsight)

From the above study and from some of my own insights with clients, some of the common sources of technology foresight errors and miscalculations include:

• The early hype error. In the short term, marketers, promoters and eager inventors  seem to overestimate the impacts of any new technology and in the long term underestimate such impacts and consequences (see the Gartner Hype curves)
• The replacement hype error-the belief that new technology will  replace the existing incumbent technology & that this will happen relatively fast. In reality competing technologies often coexist over a long period of time (i.e. Radio & TV)
• The enhancement error-The belief that new technology will only solve old problems & supplement existing technological systems. Instead new technologies, especially platform or core technologies often lay the groundwork for entirely new systems and new resulting systemic problems.  (ie the electric motor for the railway, the car for the roadway infrastructure, the PC for the Internet, nanotech & biotech  for our bodies "intra-structure" (the Human Genome project and HapMap, and SNP's ), the impacts of which we do not fully understand yet.
• The panacea error-The mistaken belief that new technology will function as a panacea for various social problems
• The patterning and sense-making error-The difficulty of seeing new important links between seemingly unrelated and different fields of technology, especially in cases where this novel combination of fields is precisely what will offer major accelerated development opportunities
• The social impacts error-Often people who have tried to predict the future have become bogged down in the actual technology and neglected the economic and social aspects.
• The prisoners of our times error-That without realizing it, people tend to be prisoners of the spirit of their times ( Zeitgeist), erroneously believing that the big issues of today will also be the big issues of tomorrow
• The decision criteria error-The belief that only rational economic considerations are the only factors behind that choice of one technology over another. However, for many people, seemingly irrational considerations determine such choices
• The information gap error-The information on which science and technology (S&T) foresight studies are based on is often insufficient. Technology development is not linear, transparent or fully predictable, with surprise development coming out of left field such as the secret work that is done in the military or a new startup working in stealth  mode before it goes public with a breakthrough. Entrepreneurs have to deal with many unknowns -complexity, uncertainty, equivocality, ambiguity, the trap of dichotomous thinking or dichotomy, contradiction or paradox and infoglut.

From the above, the only thing we can predict for sure is that unexected things will happen.

Marshal McLuhan was the "master" in predicting the social impacts of new technologogy (in his case the media) with deadly accuracy. Marshal would ask himself 4 simple questions, which he called the tetrad, to explore the impacts and consequences of any new technology, that he didn't fully understand yet. 1) What does the technology enhance?  2) What does the technology make obsolete?  3) What does the technology retrieve that had been obsolesced earlier?  4) What does the technology flip into when pushed to extremes? 

Entrepreneurs can learn how to use this 'tetrad" tool and as well as many other tools that help develop entrepreneurial and S&T foresight.

Source: Certificate in Innovation and Entrepreneurship, University of Toronto, SCS see here

CfP Special Issue on: "Innovative University Programs in Technology Business Incubation

Call For papers; Special Issue on: "Innovative University Programs in Technology Business Incubation" in International Journal of Entrepreneurship and Innovation Management (IJEIM)

To compete in the new economy, a number of universities have been actively involved in designing and implementing innovative programs for promoting regional innovation and entrepreneurship.  Over the past three decades, one salient approach has been the development of formal technology business incubation mechanisms.  The goal of these university-based and university-sponsored organizational mechanisms is to serve as conduits facilitating the spillover of university knowledge through enterprise creation and commercialization of research results.

Some of these technology business incubation mechanisms are developed and run by the universities themselves; others are offered in partnership with public and private organizations in the community.  In all cases, their objective is to create more comprehensive and integrative incubation spaces in and around the university campuses aimed at providing seamless innovation milieus.

This special issue will feature high quality research that explores various innovative models of these formal university incubation mechanisms in developed as well as emerging regions of the world.  Preferred submissions will chronicle cases where an entrepreneurial university serves as the initiator and/or locus of regional innovation and entrepreneurship.

Subject Coverage

Potential topic areas suitable for review articles include but are not limited to:

• Business/technology incubators
• Science/research/technology parks
• Technology trampolines
• Technology/business accelerators
• Business/industry/venture centres
• Technology/research centres
• Venture funding institutes
• Technology transfer programmes/offices
• Other formal enterprise development/support mechanisms

Notes for Intending Authors

Submitted papers should not have been previously published nor be currently under consideration for publication elsewhere

All papers are refereed through a peer review process.  A guide for authors, sample copies and other relevant information for submitting papers are available on the Author Guidelines page

Important Date

Manuscript submission: 15 November, 2007

Editor and Notes

You may send one copy in the form of an MS Word file attached to an e-mail (details in Author Guidelines) to the following:

Sarfraz A. Mian (Guest Editor) State University of New York at Oswego School of Business, 310 Rich Hall Oswego, NY 13126, USA

E-mail: [email protected]

With a copy to: IEL Editorial Office E-mail: [email protected]

Please include in your submission the title of the Special Issue, the title of the Journal and the name of the Guest Editor

Special Issue of IEEE Transactions on Engineering Management on University Technology Transfer 2008

Special Issue of IEEE Transactions on Engineering Management on University Technology Transfer

Co-editors: Albert N. Link-University of North Carolina at Greensboro ([email protected]); Frank T. Rothaermel-Georgia Institute of Technology ([email protected]); Donald S. Siegel-Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute ([email protected])

Overview

The recent increase in university technology transfer, via patenting, licensing, research joint ventures, incubators, science parks, and NSF-sponsored Engineering Research Centers and Industry-University Cooperative Research Centers has important managerial and policy implications.  We seek papers from scholars in management (e.g., strategy, entrepreneurship, human resource management, and technology/innovation management), economics, sociology, political science, public administration, and engineering that explore these implications.  Both quantitative and qualitative papers are welcome.  All papers will undergo double-blind, peer review.

Research Questions

Some research questions that might be addressed in this IEEE-TEM special issue are:

• Evaluation of institutions and programs involved in university technology transfer

• Differential performance within and across institutions (e.g., universities, incubators, science parks)

• Relationships between university and industry (e.g., intellectual property rights)

• University start-up and incubator firm differential performance

• The role of human resource management practices in university technology transfer

• Importance of strategic alliances and social networks in technology transfer

• Trade-off between commercial or applied research and basic research

• Effects of technology transfer on the educational process

• Effects of technology transfer on management, especially on engineering management,

• Conflicts of interest between scientists and universities

• Formulation of technology transfer strategies by universities or industry

• Implementation of technology transfer strategies by universities or industry

A Special Issue workshop was held at  Georgia Tech for invited papers last September 2006.

I contacted  the journal office today.  This issue on technology transfer will appear in either February or May 2008 issue of IEEE Transactions on Engineering Management.