The Institutional Design for University Knowledge Transfer and Firm Creation

Universities are critical sources of innovation. In many countries, governments are working to introduce innovation policy packages to stimulate university-industry technology transfer (UITT). The Bayh-Dole Act of 1980 in the U.S. encouraged research universities to create Technology Transfer Offices (TTO). Since the Bayh-Dole Act was enacted, the dominant pathway of UITT has been through licensing. However, the challenge is that sometimes new scientific discoveries are not patentable, and licensing arrangements cannot capture the full value of a newly developed technology. In this dissertation, I analyze three other pathways in addition to licensing that enhance the overall impact of innovation.;Chapter 2 examines the role of co-authoring academic publications between university and firm researchers. The TTO acts as a gateway to a university, by lowering search costs and enabling newer connections between the university and industry. The TTO also acts as a gatekeeper, asserting the university's intellectual property and seeking to ensure new discoveries are patented before they are published openly. The analytical model is conducted. The model is examined using panel data based on a natural experiment in Japan.;Chapter 3 studies the impact of inventor involvement to university-based start-ups. The research is based upon the University of California Start-up Dataset. The effect of inventor involvement on university-based start-ups on their success (survival and exit) is analayzed. The results show that receipt of SBIR funding and first sales by product launch mediate the impact of proportion of inventor involvement on survival rate of startups. Having a greater proportion of the inventors' involvement as a founder of a start-up firm increases the likelihood of receiving SBIR funding, and launching a product, which in turn increases the likelihood of survival.;Chapter 4 explores the university-led service innovation. Based on quasiexperiment setting at an emergency room university hospitals, the impact of a phone call to a patient for feedback after being discharged and their subsequent satisfaction rating is evaluated.;The body of work helps understand the underlying mechanism of UITT. The results offer policy implications to enhance the institutional design of UITT, and ultimately impacts the reformation of University system.