Exploring the role of entrepreneurial passion for facilitating university technology commercialization: Insights from battery research as an interdisciplinary field

Abstract

University-industry technology commercialization (UTC) from interdisciplinary environments is promising to contribute to solutions for major socio-economic challenges. However, UTC requires considerable coordination and mediation effort and thus intrinsic motivation from the involved researchers. Thus, the objective of the present study is to explore entrepreneurial passion as a means to facilitate researchers’ intrinsic motivation for UTC activities. The interdisciplinary field of battery research is used as a representative environment for the expert interview study. Drawing on qualitative content analysis, a framework is developed, which links researchers’ intrinsic motivation to respective UTC activities, resulting in three distinct UTC-promoting roles. Implications for policy makers seeking to promote UTC, for research managers responsible for the implementation of transfer projects as well as actors from industry who have an interest in collaborative R&D with public research institutions are provided.

Introduction

In addition to the traditional university missions of teaching and research, the so-called “third mission” was introduced in the mid-1980s in the United States, Europe and Japan to promote public research’s contribution to economic and social development (Etzkowitz, 2003; Mowery and Sampat, 2004; Rasmussen et al., 2006). Particularly important for fulfilling the third mission are commercialization activities of scientific knowledge, often focusing on technological inventions (Perkmann et al., 2013; Weckowska et al., 2018).

The term university-industry technology commercialization (UTC) generally includes activities capable of generating capital returns from technological knowledge (Perkmann et al., 2013). Specifically, this comprises activities such as collaborative and contract research, financing PhD projects, academic consultancy, trainings and workshops, sharing facilities, patents and licensing as well as entrepreneurial activities such as university spin-offs (Bekkers and Bodas Freitas, 2008). UTC is particularly challenging and important at the same time in an interdisciplinary environment (Bazan, 2019), since interdisciplinary research is most promising for contributing to solving today’s major challenges such as tackling climate change (MacLeod, 2018).

Despite the increasing focus on commercialization, only every fifth UTC project succeeded in gaining market access (Taheri and van Geenhuizen, 2016). Previous research has identified a set of influence factors on UTC (Borge and Bröring, 2020): organizational and institutional factors (impact of policies, organization structures, types of processes and incentives) (Berbegal-Mirabent, 2018), market factors (consumer acceptance, public perception of technology, market authorization) as well as individual factors (i.e. researchers’ characteristics such as age, previous commercialization experience, reputation).

Since academic researchers usually act as initiators of UTC projects, individual factors play a crucial part for interdisciplinary UTC projects as there is a greater need for coordination and mediation (Kotha et al., 2013). Thus, academic researchers can contribute significantly to the success of interdisciplinary UTC projects by taking advantage of personal networks and expertise. The initiation of UTC, therefore, depends to a large degree on their motivation to engage in UTC (D’Este and Patel, 2007; Rizzo, 2015).

A considerable number of studies focuses on investigating external incentives such as personal and institutional income, reputation and improved accessibility to resources (Nilsson et al., 2010; D’Este and Perkmann, 2011; Franco and Haase, 2015; Hayter, 2015; Rizzo, 2015; Olaya Escobar et al., 2017). However, few studies shed light on academic researchers’ inherent motivation for UTC activities (Lam, 2011; Olaya Escobar et al., 2017). Studies in this context aim to broaden the understanding of personal and environmental factors influencing the development of motivation for UTC on a conceptual basis. However, the individual UTC activities themselves as well as their integration into academics’ professional life have hardly been analyzed in detail.

Academic researchers make their involvement in UTC dependent on activities that are congruent with their academic value orientation, ranging from “traditional” via “hybrid” to “entrepreneurial” (Lam, 2011). Academic value orientation is often related to the process of scientific knowledge production from basic to applied research and experimental development (Carayannis and Campbell, 2012). Self-determination theory (SDT) provides a useful framework to analyze motivation for UTC activities since it considers the complex nature of human motivation and its relationship with social values and norms (Lam, 2011). SDT distinguishes between non-self-determined and autonomous behavior, spanning the scale along the so-called self-determination continuum (SDC) from amotivation to extrinsic and intrinsic motivation (Ryan and Deci, 2002).

It is quite straightforward that intrinsic motivation is the ideal mindset for a researcher to be in when it comes to engagement in UTC activities. Hence, activities related to spin-offs are frequently emphasized in this context (Ramaciotti and Rizzo, 2015; Neves and Franco, 2018), which is why academics often see them as the main way to engage in UTC. However, a large number of alternative activities are available, that are in fact essential building blocks of successful UTC. The question remains though, how not only researchers with entrepreneurial academic value orientation, but also researchers with traditional and hybrid academic value orientation can be intrinsically motivated for UTC.

A promising concept to facilitate intrinsic motivation in UTC activities is entrepreneurial passion (Huyghe et al., 2016) – “a consciously accessible, intense positive feeling, which results from engagement in activities with identity meaning and salience to the entrepreneur” (Cardon et al., 2009). Previous studies have shown that motivation is a crucial factor for explaining effective knowledge transfer (Rajaeian et al., 2018). Consequently, entrepreneurial passion-driven activities are expected to have a positive effect on academic researchers’ engagement in UTC (Deci et al., 1994). Thus, the objective of the present study is to explore passion as a means to facilitate researchers’ intrinsic motivation for UTC activities. More specifically, this work seeks to answer the following research questions:

• How does entrepreneurial passion manifest in UTC activities?

• How can UTC activities be aligned with academic value orientation to facilitate researchers’ intrinsic motivation?

For this purpose, 30 semi-structured expert interviews are conducted and analyzed to obtain in-depth insights into UTC activities for the interdisciplinary field of German battery research. Since battery technologies are decisive to create innovations, e.g. for the field of electric mobility, there is an urgent need for R&D to be transferred into industrial application (Sick et al., 2017). By this, a general proximity to commercialization activities is inherent in battery research. Battery research also represents a multifaceted field involving experts from a variety of disciplines who combine their knowledge to extend the potential of energy storage technologies. Based on a qualitative content analysis, a framework is developed which links researchers’ motivation for UTC with the respective UTC activities.

This work contributes to three streams of literature. First, research on scientific motivation (Lam, 2011) is advanced as, in addition to the internalization of entrepreneurial behavior, the degree to which UTC activities are compatible with academic values is seen as a key factor in differentiating researcher motivation for UTC activities. In this context, this study contributes to SDT by introducing opportunities for multiple pathways of internalization and presenting them as more likely to realistically reflect a process of motivation formation than a single localization along the SDC intended to cover the entire field of action. Second, academic entrepreneurship literature is extended by adding the perspective of passion as a motive for entrepreneurial intentions in academia (Huyghe et al., 2016). It is shown how activities for UTC, which are congruent with academic values, can be identified. Third, literature on informal and collaborative modes of university-industry technology commercialization (Link et al., 2007) is strengthened by emphasizing valuable and relevant alternatives to spin-off activities, which have been investigated extensively (Wright et al., 2008).

The remaining article is structured as follows: section 2 introduces the theoretical framework by discussing concepts on motivation towards UTC activities and respective forms of passion in academia. Section 3 describes the process of data collection and evaluation, while results and discussion of the study are presented in section 4. Finally, section 5 highlights contributions and limitations as well as recommendations for future research.