commercialization

A survey was conducted to assess business, technical, and financial needs of SBIR Phase II firms and services used by the firms to meet their needs. The survey findings were intended to lay
the foundation to help SBIR firms: (a) identify and understand their commercialization needs,
(b) locate service providers, and (c) expediently access services.

The authors develop an intermediate input model to examine the extent to which the growth in licensing is due to the productivity observable inputs or driven by a change in the propensity of faculty and administrators to engage in commercializing university research.

For most university inventions, according to the authors, there is a moral hazard problem with regard to inventor effort. Their theoretical analysis shows that for such inventions, development would not occur unless the inventors income is tied to the licensees output by payments such as royalties or equity.

The study is one of a series dealing with various aspects of microeconomic reform which have been prepared by the Stanford Project on Industrial Restructuring and the Political Economy in Russia. Research for the paper is based primarily on the study of several cases of cooperative attempts by U.S. companies and Russian enterprises to commercialize Russian technology.