The Innovation Act was introduced by the French government in 1999, with the aim of encouraging academic institutions to protect and commercialize their scientists' inventions. We explore the effects of the Act on the distribution of Intellectual Property Rights (IPRs) over academic scientists' inventions. We find that, before the Act, academic institutions had a strong tendency to leave such IPRs in the hands of their main funders, namely public research organizations (such as CNRS or INSERM), and business companies. After the introduction of the Act, French academic institutions increased their propensity to claim IPRs over their employees' inventions, mainly under the form of co-ownership with business companies. This result varies with the technological class of the patent, the presence and age of a technology transfer office within the university, and the university size and type.

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This analysis contributes to the understanding of the role of basic science in generating breakthrough inventions in the pharmaceutical industry. Recognizing the within-firm heterogeneity of inventive activities, we look not only at the firm level, but also at the firm-technology level for characteristics determining breakthroughs. A key finding is that firms pursuing basic science are more likely to produce breakthrough inventions. At the same time, doing more basic science in science disciplines that are closely linked to a given technology domain does not increase the likelihood of BTs in that particular technology. The insignificance of basic science intensity at the technology level, coupled to the significance at the firm level, suggests that the breakthrough rewards from science capacity are not reaped in the technology areas immediately involved in basic science, but in other areas of the technology portfolio of the firm. Our findings are consistent with the view of science as a map to span processes of local search and the wider applicability of scientific insights.

New entrepreneurial ventures may represent a viable and effective mechanism to transform academic knowledge into regional economic growth. We test this notion for the Italian provinces between 2001 and 2006. We evaluate three outputs of academic activities: teaching, research and Intellectual Property Rights (IPR) activities management. New ventures may be able to transform the mentioned outputs into improved economic performance. The findings show that the effects of academic outputs on provincial economic growth (all sectors) are appreciable when they are associated with sustained entrepreneurial activities in the province. It suggests that academic inquiry may provide new ventures with valuable commercial opportunities overseen by established companies. IntroductionHow does knowledge spur economic growth? The theories of endogenous growth use the informational characteristics of knowledge as introduced by Arrow (1962) to explain endogenous growth trajectories (Romer, 1986;Lucas, 1988). According to these theories, it is the generation of knowledge that spurs growth and such knowledge is partially appropriable as it spills over into the hands of third parties that in turn use it to generate new knowledge and useful ideas.Although endogenous growth theories have predicted general patterns of growth, they fail in explaining the several "paradoxes" that are currently crowding decision-makers'agendas. In fact, some scholars have contended that it is not investment in knowledge per se that spurs growth and thus competitiveness; rather, the critical facet of the economic relevance of knowledge is the commercialization of the results that knowledge produces (Acs et al., 2009;Audretsch and Keilbach, 2008;Braunerhjelm et al., 2010). These authors posit the existence of a "knowledge filter" between investment in new knowledge and its economic exploitation. Such a filter results from the inherent peculiarities of knowledge, as opposed to information itself. Knowledge generating activities produce uncertain economic results that are associated with high degrees of asymmetries between inventors and potential exploiters.High uncertainty and high asymmetries result in high transaction costs among economic agents (Audretsch, 2007).These characteristics become even more evident when knowledge is generated in academic laboratories. A strand of literature in the sociology and economics of science fields stresses that the incentive system in place within the academic community would rarely lead scientists to produce findings of immediate industrial application (Dasgupta and David, 1994;Merton, 1973;Stephan, 1996). The recent involvement of universities in technological development has in fact shown that whenever academic findings display potential technological applications, they are at an early stage of development and tend to serve a variety of industrial purposes (Colyvas et al., 2002;Jensen and Thursby, 2001;Piergiovanni and Santarelli, 2001).In such a context, entrepreneurship is seen as the main mechanism that ens...

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