CHALLENGES FACED BY ACADEMIC ENTREPRENEUR IN TECHNOLOGY TRANSFER PURSUIT

The development of academic entrepreneurship is often benchmarked by the rate of patenting, licensing and spin-offs creation. However, these traditional indicators inherently require a long gestation period to materialize, thus creating a challenge to gauge the progress of novice universities. This paper preliminarily assesses the nature of academic entrepreneurship from a developing economy perspective and explore common challenges faced by academic entrepreneurs in bringing research discoveries from lab to market. Survey questionnaires were distributed to academic entrepreneurs of a public university in Malaysia and a series of answers to an open-ended question were analysed through content analysis. Although the results showed the rate of patents, licensing and start-up creations are modest, however, most of the scientists have made significant progress to the pre-commercialization stage by developing prototypes with commercial potential. The content analysis revealed that scientists’ entrepreneurial characteristics and institutional support were among the main factors that affect the commercialization of research discoveries. These findings suggest for the relevant authority to take improvement measures to enhance the efficiency of Technology Transfer Office and for the private funders and government disbursing agencies to provide more transparency in decision criteria and to reduce the period of application process and approval results. Avenues for future research are recommended based on the findings derived from this single case study.

https://www.webofscience.com/wos/woscc/full-record/WOS:000734046700011?SID=F4PrTcAUETxLsLbLjHV

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The ratio of academic scientists to the labor force in Malaysia has increased. However, the contribution of academic scientists to commercialize research discoveries remains limited. Successful research commercialization or university technology transfer requires entrepreneurial effort that may involve skills beyond the traditional roles of academics. The ability to identify the commercial opportunity of research, i.e. entrepreneurial opportunity recognition, has been proven to be a critical skill for an academic entrepreneur. Earlier findings in this area would have been far more useful if the antecedents of entrepreneurial opportunity recognition were recognized. Although self-regulated learning has been inferred to as informal entrepreneurship education for academic entrepreneurs, there has been a lack of evidence on how it influences their academic entrepreneurship performance. This paper examined the characteristics of academic entrepreneurs and the key success factors, whether academics’ opportunity recognition ability is influenced by their self-regulated learning behavior. A quantitative research design was employed based on a case study of a technological university in Malaysia involving 115 academic entrepreneurs. Structural equation modeling analysis results revealed that academics’ opportunity recognition and social capital are the most important determinants of their academic entrepreneurship performance. The efficiency of the Technology Transfer Office and the ease of securing funding play influential roles too, but to a smaller extent. Most importantly, opportunity recognition is strengthened by self-regulated learning, through frequent deliberate practices in information and knowledge seeking that enable scientists to be more creative and innovative in translating research into marketable products and technology.

https://www.webofscience.com/wos/woscc/full-record/WOS:000667510300007?SID=F4PrTcAUETxLsLbLjHV

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The degree of informational support academic scientists acquired from social network is associated with greater perceived feasibility that may influence their involvement in the research commercialization. Social capital has been commonly assessed by measuring the number of direct contacts from business and industry networks as well as the frequency of establishing new contacts. These approaches, however, have not adequately explained how social capital is beneficial to their entrepreneurial endeavor. This paper attempts to validate social capital as a formative construct using partial least squares structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM) to explore the relative importance of personal, professional and business networks to academic entrepreneurs in their technology transfer pursuit. A sample of 115 academic entrepreneurs of a Malaysia public research university was surveyed. The analyses of formative measurement model to evaluate construct validity, collinearity and significance of indicators revealed that scientists’ personal network is the most important social resource that facilitate and encourage them in the technology transfer pursuit, followed with business partners and potential investors. Although scientists have a large professional network through their attendance to conference, workshops and seminars, however, these platforms are often themed to focus more on sharing scientific knowledge rather than on academic entrepreneurship.

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Although many universities have established Technology Transfer Office (TTO), there is no consensus in the literature that TTO has been successful in promoting academic entrepreneurship. Inhomogeneity of TTO services across different universities results in an inconsistent relationship between TTO formation and the rate of technology transfer activities. The TTO efficiency has been mostly researched based on the objective measures. However, far too little attention has been paid to explore the perception of academic entrepreneurs on the degree to which TTO has been efficient in greasing the wheels of their technology transfer pursuit. This paper aims to conceptualize TTO efficiency as a formative construct and to validate the proposed measurement model using partial least squares structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM). The empirical results confirmed the absence of collinearity while validity was established using a modified multitrait–multimethod (MTMM) matrix analysis. Furthermore, the indicators’ weights revealed which constituent services provided by TTO benefit academic entrepreneurs the most. This study contributes new insights into academic entrepreneurs’ perception towards the effectiveness of TTO services that further pave a way for the university to prioritize improvement measures.

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APPLICATION IN ACADEMIC ENTREPRENEURSHIP RESEARCH

This paper discusses a methodological process involved to design a questionnaire survey and to assess instrument’s validity and reliability in a pilot study of academic entrepreneurship research. Confirmatory factor analysis in structural equation modeling is a common method used to assess construct validity. To perform such statistical analysis technique, a certain sample size requirement must be met. In some cases, construct validity is not feasibly assessed during pilot study because of sample size limitation. Instead, validity assessment is performed during final data collection with a larger sample size. Alternatively, this paper presents guidelines for research practice to perform minimal check to assess construct validity qualitatively in a pilot study before investing resources to collect final data. By adapting the work of Nahm et al.(2002) on Q-sort method and Moore and Benbasat’s (1991) hit-ratio index, the procedures allow researcher to assess if constructs have been reasonably operationalized, to identify potential problematic questionnaire items with linguistic ambiguity and to address comprehension issue which may not be appreciable using conventional statistical analysis.

https://www.webofscience.com/wos/woscc/full-record/WOS:000444975300048?SID=F4PrTcAUETxLsLbLjHV

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entrepreneurship initiatives by university

This paper aims to explore to what extent university’s role in providing supportive infrastructure contributes to venture creation. Specifically, best practices in stimulating technology-based start-ups have not been widely discussed in the context of developing country. Although the previous study has explored this from a management perspective, this paper provides further insights on how academic entrepreneurship or entrepreneurial activity in a university can be increased through various initiatives. Considering Universiti Teknologi Malaysia (UTM) as a case study, findings identify that collaborative business incubation and entrepreneurship education for academic entrepreneurs as evidence of practices that stimulates commercialization of university-invented technologies as well as develops academic entrepreneurs amongst research scientists.

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