Abstract
We study how becoming an entrepreneur affects academic scientists’ research. We propose that entrepreneurship will shift scientists’ attention away from intradisciplinary research questions and toward new bodies of knowledge relevant for downstream technology development. This will propel scientists to engage in exploration, meaning they work on topics new to them. In turn, this shift toward exploration will enhance the impact of the entrepreneurial scientist’s subsequent research, as concepts and models from other bodies of knowledge are combined in novel ways. Entrepreneurship leads to more impactful research, mediated by exploration. Using panel data on the full population of scientists at a large research university, we find support for this argument. Our study is novel in that it identifies a shift of attention as the mechanism underpinning the beneficial spillover effects from founding a venture on the production of public science. A key implication of our study is that commercial work by academics can drive fundamental advances in science.
Highlights
Science represents a distinct social system dedicated to the production of knowledge, often openly shared as a public good in scientific journals (Merton 1973, Polanyi 2000)
In the following we present theoretical arguments that emphasize the impact of entrepreneurship on the direction of an academic’s research and hypothesize how a shift onto new topics may lead to higher-impact research
Our findings from panel data on the full population of academic scientists at a research university support our hypotheses by showing that: (a) being an academic entrepreneur has a positive effect on publishing in new subject areas; (b) publishing in new subject areas has a positive effect on the citations of subsequent publications; and (c) exploration partially mediates the effect of being an entrepreneur on research impact
Summary
Science represents a distinct social system dedicated to the production of knowledge, often openly shared as a public good in scientific journals (Merton 1973, Polanyi 2000). An important channel through which opportunities arising from scientific discoveries are exploited is by way of academic entrepreneurship, where academic scientists found a firm to commercialize their inventions or expertise (Zucker and Darby 1996, Hughes 2001, Shane 2001, Powell and Sandholtz 2012). Academic entrepreneurs often remain at their universities while developing a venture (Lacetera 2009, Powell and Sandholtz 2012). Many universities promote this course of action as they seek to facilitate the commercial exploitation of scientific discoveries. There may be complementarities with research, as the entrepreneurial project may require additional research or inspire new research questions (Rosenberg 1982, Shane 2004, Azoulay et al 2009)
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