Copyright © Photo by CORDIS
A recent study supported by the EU-funded ATTRACT2 project looks into whether and how open innovation activities and scientists’ entrepreneurial intentions foster the transformation of research outcomes into marketable products. Published in the ‘CERN IdeaSquare Journal of Experimental Innovation’, the study analyses five case studies of European research consortia funded under ATTRACT2 to propose potential theoretical mechanisms that limit or encourage market commercialisation activities.
“To generate the case studies, we conducted semi-structured interviews with project leaders and team members of each of the five projects. We then deductively coded the sections pertaining to entrepreneurial intentions, open innovation, and activities towards the market commercialization of the research results,” explains Prof. Dr Gernot Pruschak of Bern University of Applied Sciences, Switzerland, in a news item posted on the ATTRACT2 website.
“Through the interdisciplinarity of our research team, which included scholars from engineering, management, and policy research, we effectively integrated diverse viewpoints in the analysis process.”
When scientists lack entrepreneurial intentions
Open innovation activities describe collaborations and exchange of knowledge and resources that are not confined within a single organisation but also make use of a variety of external sources to drive innovation. So what are the dynamics between such activities and entrepreneurial intentions, in other words, a scientist’s motivation to become an entrepreneur? The study’s results show that inbound open innovation activities, which entail sourcing and acquiring expertise from outside the organisation, can compensate for a lack of entrepreneurial intentions among academically trained scientists.
The lack of entrepreneurial intentions is also addressed through coupled open innovation activities. These involve collaborating with peers and business-focused projects to combine internal and external ideas and technologies. Inbound and coupled open innovation activities can therefore increase the likelihood that academic research will be transformed into a marketable product.
Read the full story on the CORDIS | European Commission website.
