Navigating a Sea of Change: Identity Misalignment and Adaptation in Academic Entrepreneurship

Abstract

The commercialization of university–held research discoveries is increasingly seen as a promising source of revenue, and a growing number of universities are adding policies and incentives in an attempt to encourage commercialization activities. The effectiveness of these efforts is in jeopardy, however, because these changes can unintentionally create an environment ripe for misalignment between policies and incentives and university scientists’ work identity. We develop a conceptual model that suggests such changes trigger moral and hedonistic cognitive dissonance, and in reaction scientists can engage in identity adaptation via distinct pathways, leading to different levels of commercialization engagement intensity.

Should I Stay, or Should I Go? Job satisfaction as a moderating factor between outcome expectations and entrepreneurial intention among academics

“…Academic spin-offs (based on intellectual property or knowledge and skills) are considered to be a specific form of academic entrepreneurship. They are an essential part of the commercial knowledge transfer, a vital task of entrepreneurial universities (Etzkowitz, 2017 ; Meek and Wood, 2016 ) and thus a considerable extension of an academic career. By providing insight into entrepreneurial intention we gained a greater understanding of general entrepreneurial activities that extend beyond the academic context as well as activities of knowledge transfer.…”

“…Universities seek to develop policies and instruments that encourage entrepreneurial careers of their academic researchers and support spin-offs to commercialize research as a specific form of academic entrepreneurship. Within the entrepreneurial literature, there is ample evidence that universities are key actors in shaping and influencing favorable entrepreneurial ecosystems, for example by creating an entrepreneurial culture, inaugurating technology transfer offices and providing infrastructure and incentives for entrepreneurial activities (Etzkowitz, 2003 , 2014 , 2017 ; Huyghe & Knockaert, 2015 ; Kirby et al, 2011 ; Meek & Wood, 2016 ; Miller et al, 2018 ). Although the literature on academic entrepreneurship has focused primarily on exogenous factors such as socio-organizational conditions affecting entrepreneurial decision-making (Feola et al, 2017 ; Huyghe & Knockaert, 2015 ; Kirby et al, 2011 ; Miranda et al, 2017 ), empirical research identifying endogenous, motivational factors such as job-satisfaction for entrepreneurial careers of academics are remain limited.…”

The Learning Process in Technology Entrepreneurship Education—Insights from an Engineering Degree

“…This difference between the two educational approaches contributed to the divergence which resulted in the creation of technology products with no clear market fit (Im and Workman ). Furthermore, the differing educational approaches contributed to the complexity of the transition of faculty from technology researchers into academic entrepreneurs (Meek and Wood ).…”

Quality of research as source and signal: revisiting the valorization process beyond substitution vs complementarity

“…It is not an exaggeration to state that Italian researchers and professors are asked to contribute to research valorization while they are also committed to teach to a large (on average) number of undergraduate students and to fight to acquire funds out of a meagre national research budget. At the same time academic researchers make their career mainly on the basis of scientific publications, so that the incentives to allocate time to non-publication activities are weak, as discussed by a large recent literature (Hmieleski & Powell, 2018;Ho et al, 2016;Loi & Di Guardo, 2015;Meek & Wood, 2016;Tartari & Breschi, 2012;Watermeyer, 2015).…”