Entrepreneurial Scientists Research Articles

Inside the Turris Eburnea: Entrepreneurial Scientists Emerging from Academic Hierarchies

Why do inventors and top scientists from leading universities exploit their research results differently from others? Why do apparently similar laboratory experiences make ‘academic entrepreneurs’ achieve different entrepreneurial goals? Does the academic experience have an influence on the willingness to spin off? Or is that willingness simply driven by the possession of a particular scientific formula? The principal aim of this study is to answer these questions by examining the conditions under which academic scientists can commercialize their knowledge through an entrepreneurial development of their scientific results in the form of spin-off firms.

When Do Technology Entrepreneurs Start New Ventures? Discontinuities, Knowledge Resources, and Market Entry

This paper examines the question of whether the initial stock of resources of new ventures that enter an industry differs based on the whether they enter before or after a technological discontinuity occurs. We draw on the theoretical foundations of the resource-based view of the firm, and those of industry evolution, to argue that differences in the technological resources of these new ventures are driven by shifts in the valuation of resources caused by the technological change, and by shifts in the opportunity awareness advantage that knowledge proximity confers to scientists and to specialized technology investors in periods of change. We show that prior to a dramatic technological shift, talented entrepreneurial scientists are more likely to populate and lead venture founding teams and that, after a shift, the flow of scientists reverses, as they are less likely to be involved in the founding of new ventures. Further investigation also reveals that opportunity recognition is a key factor in the change of scientific resources in new ventures, and that knowledge proximity plays an important role in this recognition. The findings provide support for a link between competitive heterogeneity, the origin of organizational endowments, industry life cycle, and knowledge resources.

Psychobiology, sex research and chimpanzees: philanthropic foundation support for the behavioral sciences at Yale University, 1923—41

Behavioral science research in American universities was promoted and influenced by philanthropic foundations. In the 1920s and 1930s, Rockefeller philanthropies in particular financed behavioral science research projects that promised to fulfill their mandates to `improve mankind', mandates that foundation officers transformed into an informal, loosely defined human engineering effort. Controlling behavior, especially sexual and social `dysfunction', was a major priority. The behavioral scientists at Yale University, led by president James R. Angell and `psychobiologist' Robert M. Yerkes, tapped into foundation largesse by crafting research programs that promised to contribute to the `welfare of mankind' through the investigation and control of sexual and social behavior. Foundation officers supported Yerkes' primate research because they accepted his premise that analyzing chimpanzee sexual behavior would yield valuable insights into the evolutionary underpinnings of human development and would thus give investigators the necessary information to ameliorate dysfunction. Between 1925 and 1940, philanthropic foundations contributed approximately $7 million to support the Yale Institute of Human Relations and the affiliated Yerkes Laboratories of Primate Biology. Yet, disappointment with the results of the Yale appropriations ultimately contributed to foundation officers turning away from behavioral sciences and toward biological sciences as they continued their efforts to improve mankind through human engineering. This article examines the interaction between foundation officers and Yale behavioral scientists to illustrate how scientific entrepreneurs successfully crafted rationales about human sexuality to solicit funds, how philanthropic foundation officers became enmeshed in the behavioral science research projects that they funded, and how a cooperative human engineering effort at Yale developed in the 1920s and unraveled in the 1930s.

Nuclear Physics in Norway, 1933–1955

In the late 1940s and the 1950s, Norwegian nuclear scientists, engineers, and administrators were deeply split over their nation’s goals, organization, politics, and tools for research in nuclear physics. One faction was determined to build a nuclear reactor in Norway, while another fiercely opposed the reactor plans and focused on particle accelerators. The first faction comprised scientific entrepreneurs and research technologists, the second academic scientists, most of whom began their research careers in nuclear physics in the 1930s. To understand this conflict, I trace the development of nuclear research in Norway from the early 1930s to the mid-1950s, placing it within an international context.

CAPABILITIES AND TECHNOLOGICAL CHANGE: SCIENCE VS BUSINESS BASED ENTREPRENEURS AND NEW VENTURE PERFORMANCE.

Drawing on the idea that capabilities are context-specific to the competitive environment, this paper argues that entrepreneurial scientists and business entrepreneurs will react differently to venturing opportunities afforded by technological change. It also suggests that the value of capabilities of venture founders and new venture performance will differ based on the technological change faced at venture entry.

Overregulation of conflicts hinders medical progress.

The revolution in medicine and technology over the past few decades is largely the result of partnerships--or a "harmony of interests"--between private companies and entrepreneurial scientists and clinicians. Regulations to prevent conflicts of interest by restricting medical education, medical research, expert advisory functions, or researcher ownership of inventions may have the unintended consequence of slowing medical progress.

An Innovative Biotechnology Start-up Company Approach

This paper describes the author's involvement in the early experiences of a start-up biotechnology company created outside the university environment. In this case, two self-employed, entrepreneurial scientists with no university affiliation developed commercializable intellectual property. Falling outside the more common university technology commercialization process, there were a number of issues that were quite different from those a typical university start-up company might face, and these are illustrated. Most importantly, this case is an exemplar of how other non-university entrepreneurs might contemplate utilizing universities to further their technology commercialization objectives.

Wolfram Hörz 1944–2005

Fields of research are frequently cultivated by a few scientific entrepreneurs whose vision and drive inspire the rest of us. The analysis of chromatin structure and function has profited immensely from leaders such as Wolfram Horz. The yeast PHO5 promoter model developed by Wolfram Horz has become a paradigm for dissecting the events underlying promoter-specific chromatin opening in response to environmental cues. His elucidation of such events has yielded reference points for numerous followup studies investigating the emerging principles of gene regulation through chromatin reconfiguration.

Biotechnology entrepreneurial scientists and their collaborations

Inter-institutional scientific collaborations in biotechnology are now known to be the vehicle that drives the industry forward. Since networks of collaborations become crucial for biotechnology research, academic and industrial scientists act as entrepreneurs by expressing dedication to the potential commercial value of their intellectual capital. This paper focuses on the new scientific entrepreneurial spirit in the universities and the industry, and explores possible statistical and descriptive features of entrepreneurial scientists. The core analysis explores the relations between existing scientific collaborations and the scientific and intellectual capital of the scientists as well as the impact of the characteristics of the institution by which they are employed. Some analytical distinctions between various forms of scientific-entrepreneurship are suggested toward the end of the paper.

Biotechnology entrepreneurial scientists and their collaborations

Inter-institutional scientific collaborations in biotechnology are now known to be the vehicle that drives the industry forward. Since networks of collaborations become crucial for biotechnology research, academic and industrial scientists act as entrepreneurs by expressing dedication to the potential commercial value of their intellectual capital. This paper focuses on the new scientific entrepreneurial spirit in the universities and the industry, and explores possible statistical and descriptive features of entrepreneurial scientists. The core analysis explores the relations between existing scientific collaborations and the scientific and intellectual capital of the scientists as well as the impact of the characteristics of the institution by which they are employed. Some analytical distinctions between various forms of scientific-entrepreneurship are suggested toward the end of the paper.

Grant schemes supporting scientific entrepreneurs have induced job growth in the United States, but they haven't yet crossed the Atlantic, says Eugene Russo.

Grant schemes supporting scientific entrepreneurs have induced job growth in the United States, but they haven't yet crossed the Atlantic, says Eugene Russo.

The making of modern scientific personae: the scientist as a moral person? Emil Du Bois-Reymond and his friends

This article examines the notion of the `scientist as a moral person' in the light of the early stages of the commodification of science and the transformation of research into a big enterprise, operating on the principle of the division of labour. These processes were set in train at the end of the 19th century. The article focuses on the concomitant changes in the public persona and the habitus of scientific entrepreneurs. I begin by showing the significance of the professional networks that were built up and maintained to further a group's research ideas and the careers of its members, thus demonstrating one condition on which depended their practice of science and their ability to earn a living. This leads to a characterization of the changing styles of work, thought and life, and to a consideration of public perceptions and of the ways in which a new self-image of scholarship and science was fashioned. A critical discussion of the public role of these mandarin scientists follows in order to highlight the strains created by the commodification of science at a time of international tensions and conflicts, when shared beliefs in scholarly cosmopolitanism were subverted by appeals to science and scholarship to work in the service of one's own nation as its `courtiers'. Various considerations of peculiar analogies between national styles of research and the style of social organization are then noted. In the final section, the article queries the long-term impact of these developments on the ideal of the scientist as a `moral person'. Taking a cue from Max Weber and pursuing reflections by Zygmunt Bauman on `science moralized', I argue that the emergence of a type of `specialists without spirit' was an unintended but fatal consequence of the changes in research practices promoted by scientific entrepreneurs such as Du Bois-Reymond. I conclude that the temptation to sever the ties to a general ethos of civil virtues lay in the rationalization, specialization and potential de-humanization of the objectifying scientific outlook once advocated for its efficiency.

The second academic revolution and the rise of entrepreneurial science

Entrepreneurial scientists and entrepreneurial universities are reshaping the academic landscape by transforming knowledge into intellectual property. Faculty members and graduate students are learning to assess the commercial as well as the intellectual potential of their research. During the past two decades, a broad range of universities, well beyond those with traditional ties to industry, have undertaken to mine their research resources for profit. As their interest in making money from their research resources grows, universities compete in a new arena.

Population-based genetic screening for reproductive counseling: the Tay-Sachs disease model.

Since 1970, more than 1.4 million individuals worldwide have been screened voluntarily to determine if they are carriers of the mutant gene for Tay-Sachs Disease (TSD). Employing both enzymatic and molecular methods (for optimal sensitivity and specificity) more than 1400 couples have been identified to be at-risk for TSD in their offspring, i.e., both parents heterozygotes. Through prenatal testing of more than 3200 pregnancies, births of over 600 infants with this uniformly fatal neurodegenerative disease have been prevented. In the United States and Canada, the incidence of TSD in the Jewish population has been reduced by more than 90%. More that 100 mutations in the hexosaminidase A gene (the TSD locus) have been identified to date. Some are associated with later onset or more chronic forms of neuronal storage disease. Two mutations cause a carrier-like "pseudo-deficiency" when enzymatic testing is used (false positives). A number of practical, social, and ethical complexities have been identified in this prototypic population-based effort. Educational and counseling components must be provided both before and after screening. Issues of privacy and confidentiality of test results must be addressed. In certain cultures insurability and employment may be involved. The public perception of the biomedical community as advocates for wide-scale testing and screening may be interpreted, in some systems, as conflicts of interest on the part of entrepreneurial scientists, clinicians, and institutions. Many new opportunities for population-based screening will be evident in this era of genome-related discovery. Accordingly, some of the experiences with Tay-Sachs disease prevention may be instructive.

Publicly funded scientific entrepreneurs are entitled to profit from their discoveries

Publicly funded scientific entrepreneurs are entitled to profit from their discoveries

Publicly funded scientific entrepreneurs are not entitled to profit from their discoveries

Much of the basic and applied research that is carried out in the United States is funded by the federal government and takes place in university centres. The results of this research serve as a knowledge base for private enterprise. This arrangement is intended to benefit the public by the introduction of new goods and services and to benefit private enterprise by the profits it derives from such goods and services. What sustains this arrangement is the existence of laws and legal transactions which recognize claims concerning licences, patents and private property. Private Property The modern view of private property emerged in the 17th century. It is best illustrated by John Locke's classic formulation. "Though the earth and all inferior creatures be common to all men, yet every man has a property in his own person; this nobody has any right to but himself. The labour of his body and the work of his hands we may say are properly his. Whatsoever, then, he removes out of the state that nature both provided and left it in, he hath mixed his labour with, and joined to it something that is his own, and thereby makes it his property. It being by him removed from the common state nature placed it in, it hath by this labour something annexed to it that excludes the common right of other men" (Locke, 1971: 22). Locke's views were based on his belief in natural rights, foremost of which is the right to property. Civil government is a fiduciary trust created by a social contract for the protection of natural rights. Locke's natural rights and social contract theory were completely rejected by Utilitarianism. Its founder, Jeremy Bentham, dismissed natural rights as "nonsense on stilts." Yet, this rejection of major elements of Locke's theory did not include the labour theory of property. The Utilitarian John Stuart Mill observed that, "Private property, in every defence made of it, is supposed to mean, the guarantee to individuals of the fruits of their own labour and abstinence" (Mill, 1893). With the notable exception of the Marxists, who use labour theory to attack the institution of private

Entrepreneurial scientists and entrepreneurial universities in American academic science.

There is a heightened and novel appreciation of the importance of basic academic research to industry, both in American universities and in private business firms. Universities, in this period of increased costs and static income from governmental and private patrons, are considering the possibilities of new sources of funds to come from patenting the discoveries made by scientists holding academic appointments, from the sale of knowledge gained by research done under contract with commercial firms, and from entry into partnership with private business enterprises. By contracting with industry to conduct research in particular areas and by establishing offices to explore the economic potentialities of the results of the research done by their academic staffs, university administrators are beginning to exercise some of the functions of research administrators in private business. Many individual scientists within the universities are responding very favourably to those possibilities; some go further to create their own firms to exploit for profit their own discoveries. Thorstein Veblen's expectation, in the early twentieth century, that American universities would increasingly take on commercial characteristics, through the entrepreneurial activities of university presidents,1 has acquired a semblance of validity: university presidents and other administrative officials of universities have begun to consider in a very active way the acquisition of income for their universities by the performance of research and sale of the results to private enterprises through commercial agents. Opportunities for commercial utilisation of scientific research have been often available to scientists, but the traditional ethos of science did not permit them to erode the boundary between science and private, profitseeking business. What is new in the present situation is that many academic scientists no longer regard such constraints as necessary or right. Heretofore, in the wide gap between scientific discovery and application, business firms were expected to have their own industrial scientists conduct research and development which was an activity presumed to be inappropriate for academic scientists. In the more recent period, however, academic scientists have often been eager and willing to direct, or participate in, programmes of research and development, aiming at commercial application.

The changing face of chairmen of psychiatry departments in America: an opinion.

Two decades ago psychiatrists were trained by a few charismatic, humanistic clinicians who did not have much to do with laboratories or fund raising. After World War II academic psychiatry was transformed, largely by federal money, into a multidimensional scientific enterprise, the leaders of which needed to be scientific entrepreneurs as well as persuasive humanists. But, the author believes, since the fantastic promise of a technology for universal well-being could not be fulfilled before the sources of financial support began to dry up, department chairmen are evolving from humanistic scientists into corporate executives who haven't the time or energy to pursue clinical elegance or rigorous laboratory research firsthand.