Commercialization of Research: Research Universities as Incubators of New Business

Research universities will have an increasingly important role in economic development, through the commercialization of research based innovations. This project will involve three or four Master students at NTNU, who will conduct interviews with academi c entrepreneurs at three research universities: Chalmers, NTNU and the University of Texas at Austin. Important lessons here will be what characterize the people who are most successful in pushing ideas and IP towards commercialization. The proposed stud y will also inform issues such as: how to recruit ideas and inventions from researchers and push these ideas towards commercialization, what motivates academic entrepreneurs. The goal of this project is to be an important step in the direction of incre asing the viability of the projects that are sought commercialized from research universities, and to augment the value added that the commercialization units at these universities give to these ventures. In learning from the practices—successes and fail ures—of academic entrepreneurs at multiple universities, we can move towards a better understanding of international best practices of technology commercialization from research universities.