Bringing ideas to market — and back to the lab
Universities are engines of discovery. From X-rays to e-readers and mRNA vaccines to the World Wide Web, research born in university labs has shaped the world we live in.
Still, university-based technology transfer has its skeptics. Although the goal is to increase the likelihood that new knowledge will be used for the public good, some worry that encouraging faculty to focus on commercialization could come at the expense of their core mission: conducting basic research and developing new knowledge.
So, does commercialization actually pull scientists away from open-ended inquiry?
In a new study shared in today’s Stanford Report, I combine rich data on invention disclosures and licenses from Stanford’s Office of Technology Licensing (OTL) with detailed publication records to examine what happens when university inventions are licensed.
Specifically, I compare the publication records of Stanford researchers who all disclosed inventions to the OTL but had different licensing outcomes for those technologies, while carefully controlling for idiosyncratic researcher differences, such as baseline productivity.
The analysis suggests that licensing is associated with more academic research, not less. On average, inventors with licensed technologies publish about 26 percent more papers within five years than inventors without licenses. The gains aren’t explained by patenting alone (since most unlicensed technologies are also patented). Instead, the boost seems likely to come from the deeper industry engagement that licensing enables — such as research funding, new ideas sparked by industry partners, or collaborative projects.
These findings suggest that, at least in a setting like Stanford, commercialization and academic research are not necessarily at odds. Instead, they can reinforce each other; licensing gives ideas a path to market while also fueling discovery and publications.
Important questions remain. For example, are there other universities or some individual scientists or fields for which licensing has a net negative impact on academic research output?
But for now, the evidence offers a hopeful takeaway — bringing university inventions to market need not diminish the pursuit of knowledge. In fact, it may strengthen it.
Kate Reinmuth is pursuing a PhD in economics at Stanford School of Humanities and Sciences jointly with a JD at Stanford Law School. Kate aspires to work on national economic policy related to a range of applied micro-economic topics, including innovation, competition, and inequality.
Knight-Hennessy scholars represent a vast array of cultures, perspectives, and experiences. While we as an organization are committed to elevating their voices, the views expressed are those of the scholars, and not necessarily those of KHS.
