Separate MERIT Study of European Tech Transfer Contradicts Some Conclusions
A new study from the Milken Institute confirms the success of California universities in commercializing life science research and reaffirms the international leadership of the U.S. in transfer of biotechnology from universities. Using some of the same data, however, a recent paper from the Netherlands found European tech transfer rates have been generally underestimated and intercontinental comparisons not as easy as one might assume.
Milkens Findings
Mind to Market: A Global Analysis of University Biotechnology Transfer and Commercialization, the 320-page Milken report released last week, ranks publication, patenting, and commercialization activity in biotech at 683 research universities around the world. Californias universities are consistently ranked in the top tiers of each category, most notably the University of California-San Francisco, which played a major role in launching the biotech industry 30 years ago. The study also provides 28 country profiles of national biotech activity and an assessment of university technology transfer of biotech research.
California not only leads in university technology transfer, but also in biotech venture capital funding. In 2004, the state enjoyed 87 percent ($2.36 billion) of the country's biotechnology venture capital funding. Massachusetts, in second place, received $976.9 million in funding. According to the report, the California biotech industry has thrived due to the presence of strong clusters in San Francisco, San Diego, Oakland, Los Angeles, Orange County, and San Jose, which received 15 percent of total U.S. biotech venture capital.
Massachusetts's Harvard University, however, tops the list of most successful universities in publishing new biotech research. The list ranks universities by absolute number of published articles, concentration of biotech research compared to all university published output, and number of citations to faculty work. The authors find that universities that produce a larger number of high quality articles earn more from licensing revenues than their less productive counterparts do.
Massachusetts also takes the top spot in the success of its overall university technology pipeline. This ranking, led by MIT, takes patents, licenses, licensing income, and number of start-ups into account and gives a sense of the university's ability to commercialize its discoveries.
One of the report's most interesting findings is that technology transfer offices can have a remarkable rate of return for universities. The authors suggest that for every dollar invested in offices of tech transfer, universities receive more than $6 in licensing income. After running rate-of-return simulations, they conclude that the average university would earn only 21 percent less of that income without its tech transfer office. This finding could, however, be influenced heavily by a handful of universities that have been extremely successful commercializing one or more discoveries, since the report says that most university tech transfer offices are "small, young operations, and few are profitable."
The report also concludes that the U.S. is leading the world in the commercialization of biotech research. Though the University of Tokyo and the University of London came in second and third respectively in published output and European universities establish three times as many firms (relative to research expenditures) as their counterparts in the U.S. and Canada, U.S. institutions dominate in invention disclosures, patents filed and granted, licenses executed, and licensing income. Currently, about 70 percent of global medical R&D occurs in the U.S. Milken suggests that the U.S. advantage in biotechnology stems from linkages between global firms and the country's research universities.
United Nations University-MERIT Findings
A recent study from the United Nations University-MERIT in The Netherlands takes issue with the idea that European universities cannot keep pace with their North American counterparts. Using the same 2004 survey of tech transfer activity at European universities that Milken used, the MERIT paper finds that these research institutes executed 20 percent more licenses and earned only 10 percent less license revenue in 2004 than U.S. institutions. The study, prepared by Anthony Arundel and Catalina Bordoy, contradicts some of the commercialization data presented in the Milken report. According to Arundel and Bordoy, European institutions outperform American universities in most indicators of strength in commercialization.
While Milkens Mind to Market concedes that Europe has been very successful in creating university spin-offs, it also says that the U.S. executes 25 percent more licenses and produces more than twice as much licensing income. The UNU-MERIT paper argues that internationally comparable commercialization indicators are necessary to ameliorate this kind of data discrepancy. Until such indicators are available, the authors contend, international comparisons should be made with caution.
The Milken study was sponsored in part by Inflect Technologies, a commercialization fund with offices in London and New York. Mind to Market: A Global Analysis of University Biotechnology Transfer and Commercialization is available online at: http://www.milkeninstitute.org/pdf/mind2mrkt_2006.pdf
"Developing internationally comparable indicators for the commercialization of publicly-funded research," is being presented at the Blue Sky II Conference, which concludes today in Ottawa. Abstracts for this and other papers being presented are available at: http://www.statcan.ca/english/conferences/sciencetech2005/abstracts.htm
