Publicly funded principal investigators allocation of time for public sector entrepreneurship activities

Abstract

In this paper we explore the allocation of time of publicly funded principal investigators (PIs) for public sector entrepreneurship activities. We examine their allocation of time in general to research activities and specifically at a project level in relation to the type of research, knowledge transfer activity, project impact, deliberate technology transfer strategy and boundary spanning activities using data from a full population survey of publicly funded PIs in Ireland in science, engineering and technology across national and European research programmes. We find that PIs who spend more time on general research related activities allocated a higher proportion of time to technology transfer activities and that PIs who spend more time on technology activities engaged more in end of project reports and collaborative research with industry. In relation to the importance placed on impact criteria, PIs who spend more time on research placed more importance on technology and market impacts than those spending less time on research related activities. Furthermore, PIs who spend more time on technology transfer placed greater value on technology transfer, market and economic impact. We find projects of PIs spending more time on research related activities had a greater impact on technology transfer and a greater market impact, according to the assessment of respondents, than the projects of PIs spending less time on research activities. Finally, with respect to boundary spanning activities we find PIs spending more time on research engaged more in direct consultation with industry end-users and direct consultation with their technology transfer office at the pre-proposal stage of their selected project and they had significantly larger than average amount of industry partners. We conclude our analysis by considering the implications for public sector entrepreneurship.