Technological entrepreneurship and commercialization of research results in the west and in china: comparative perspectives

Abstract

The concern with commercialization of research results has been one of the most prominent issues in the reforms of the science and technology management system in the People's Republic of China. These reforms, which unfolded during the 1980s, led to the promotion of technological entrepreneurship and the establishment of a large number of ‘science parks’ in China. In this paper, these attempts to generate technological entrepreneurship in China are discussed in the light of four different conceptual models which emerge from the Western experience. It is concluded that a ‘social agent model’ might provide a useful approach for Chinese policy-making in this area, emphasizing the interaction of teh scientists as entrepreneurs with the socially facilitated development of complementary assets to form actual agents of technological change and commercialization of new high-tech products in China.