Who commercialises research at Swedish universities and why?

Abstract

European universities have been increasingly pressured since the late 1990s to make a more visible contribution to economic development. This policy interest has produced an increasing focus on knowledge transfer generally, and more specifically on measures to promote a research culture which values patenting and firm formation. This paper presents results from an interview study of academic faculty views on knowledge transfer and commercialisation at five public universities in Sweden. Our results show that, despite the retention of inventor ownership at Swedish universities, there is a high degree of knowledge transfer of all kinds. The overriding driver of entrepreneurial behaviour among faculty appears to be the low level of direct funding for research in universities. We find that attitudes to firm formation vary from positive to ambivalent, and that faculty from the humanities and social sciences engage in a higher level of entrepreneurial and policy adaptive behaviour than they report. We conclude that faculty at Swedish universities perceive the role of public servant and entrepreneurial academic as conflicting. This perceived conflict may be one reason for reluctance to report instances of commercialisation of research.

Notes

1. Professors’ privilege is a legal arrangement by which academics at public universities in Europe were allowed ownership of intellectual property arising from their research results. This is a practice that has its roots in the German university system of the 1800s. It is also sometimes referred to as professors’ exemption because it gives academics rights that other employees do not possess.

2. These figures are based on 2011 data on R&D spending from Statistics Sweden.

3. This has changed incrementally as funding for infrastructure for technology transfer was made available to universities via a competitive open call, starting in 2000. Later the third stream ruling was revised to focus almost exclusively on innovation support.

4. Students from non-EU countries have had to pay tuition fees since 2011.