Academic entrepreneur

The scientific career in the early 19th century had very few sources of funding and support coming from the university, state, or federal level, very much in contrast to the system today. Thus, those who wanted to make a career in the sciences at that time started such by performing geological and natural history surveys.[3] These surveys were funded by both the state and federal governments, and offered temporary employment for professionals such as chemists, mineralogists, and geologists. However, once the surveys were completed, many of these scientists found themselves unemployed. While in Britain, there were a number of other opportunities for academic employment outside of surveys (such as writing, reviewing, instrument making, and public lecturing) American scientists of the time struggled to find well paying jobs. Thus, to create more opportunities, many of these men began to lobby for more state and federal surveys that would offer more employment, which required experience, expertise, and a good deal of self-promotion. During these times, men of science first began to act like entrepreneurs, linking the two fields of science and entrepreneurship to create AE .[3] ‘Academic entrepreneurship’ also originates from the American system of research, due to the fact that many universities in the US already possess entrepreneur-like characteristics. These characteristics include procuring funding and networking for resources.[4] They are known to market their developments as products and ‘sell’ them at conferences, in a similar fashion to other economic businesses.[4]

In the United States, academic entrepreneurs are primarily employed by the Universities where they conduct their research and business from. This provides the institution with a steady set of researchers and developers who maintain their focus on innovation, while also providing scientists with a reliable source of income while they invest in their innovations. Additionally, universities are often a significant source of funding for researchers and their projects as well, though today we are seeing an emergence of state and federal sources of funding as well. Many universities have created contracts with the scientists that they employ, which legally binds these innovators/researchers and their inventions to the university. This has implications for both the allocation of revenue received from a product and the distribution of credit for the product during its lifetime. The involvement of the university in the work of the AE has also been shaped by the recent adoption of the Bayh-Dole Act. [4]

The Bayh-Dole Act was enacted in 1980, and offered significant changes to both technology transfer and the field of academic entrepreneurship. This act allowed universities to retain the titles of inventions made through the employees of their institution, and from this be included in the patenting and licensing of innovations made on their campus.[5] The opinion of this act and its significance on the field of academic entrepreneurship has been mixed since its implementation. While some see the shift in university commercialization as overall beneficial, as it promotes profound managerial and policy implications for those involved, others still question whether such institutional arrangements are socially optimal, or optimal for the researchers themselves.[6] Quite a few of these concerns date to well before the act was enacted, and it is still up for debate whether such concerns have been adequately addressed or not.