When Does University Research Get Commercialized? Creating Ambidexterity in Research Institutions

TLDR

Tensions between academic and commercial activities hinder research‑oriented universities from achieving commercial outcomes. The study aims to specify these tensions and test hypotheses linking organizational and individual factors to the likelihood of research projects generating commercial outcomes. Using a novel dataset of 207 Research Council‑funded projects, the authors combine objective outcome data with principal investigators’ perceptions to test the proposed hypotheses. The analysis shows that individual‑level tensions are more salient than organizational ones, universities manage them through dual structures, and researchers who achieve commercial outcomes differ from those who produce academic results.

Abstract

abstract We examine the tensions that make it difficult for a research‐oriented university to achieve commercial outcomes. Building on the organizational ambidexterity literature, we specify the nature of the tensions (between academic and commercially‐oriented activities) at both organizational and individual levels of analysis, and how these can be resolved. We develop hypotheses linking specific aspects of the organization and the individual researcher to the likelihood of their research projects generating commercial outcomes, and we test them using a novel dataset of 207 Research Council‐funded projects, combining objective data on project outcomes with the perceptions of principal investigators. We show that the tension between academic and commercial demands is more salient at the level of the individual researcher than at the level of the organization. Universities show evidence that they are able to manage the tensions between academic and commercial demands, through for example their creation of ‘dual structures’. At the individual level, on the other hand, the tensions are more acute, so that the people who deliver commercial outcomes tend to be rather different to those who are accustomed to producing academic outcomes.