It is widely believed to be the standard route for academics starting their own business: disclose an invention to the university, get it patented and venture forth into the spin-out world. But an extensive survey has found that this is not how the majority of companies are started by US academics, suggesting that government and universities are missing an opportunity in their quest to boost entrepreneurial activity.
In what the authors say is the largest study of its kind, experts on
entrepreneurship surveyed 11,572 professors at institutions across the
United States (R. Fini, N.
Lacetera and S. Shane Res. Pol.
doi:10.1016/j.respol.2010.05.014; 2010). Of the 1,948 respondents
who had started a business, only 682, or about one-third, had set them
up to exploit patents obtained through formal university
intellectual-property systems. The remaining 1,266 respondents had
started businesses — including consultancies and manufacturing and
service-based firms — based on non-patentable knowledge.
To read the full, original article click on this link: Start-up model patently flawed : Nature News
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