The Economic Impact of Licensed Commercialized Inventions Originating in University Research, 1996-2007
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
Study Objectives
University research and research-related activities contribute in many important ways to the national economy, notably through increased productivity of applied R&D in industry due to university-developed new knowledge and technical know-how, provision of highly valued human capital embodied in faculty and students, development of equipment and instrumentation used by industry in production and research, and creation of concepts and prototypes for new products and processes. These benefits are enabled primarily through publications, conferences, information exchange via consulting and collaborative research, and hiring of trained students. This report develops estimates of the economic impact of just one of these research-related activities, licensing of university intellectual property, clearly an impact of major significance for the economy but by no means the largest source of the total impact of university research.