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When Does University Research Get Commercialized? Creating Ambidexterity in Research Institutions
Author(s) -
Ambos Tina C.,
Mäkelä Kristiina,
Birkinshaw Julian,
D'Este Pablo
Publication year - 2008
Publication title -
journal of management studies
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 4.398
H-Index - 184
eISSN - 1467-6486
pISSN - 0022-2380
DOI - 10.1111/j.1467-6486.2008.00804.x
Subject(s) - ambidexterity , salient , principal (computer security) , dual (grammatical number) , test (biology) , perception , business , knowledge management , public relations , sociology , psychology , political science , computer science , art , paleontology , literature , neuroscience , law , biology , operating system
We examine the tensions that make it difficult for a research‐oriented university to achieve commercial outcomes. Building on the organizational ambidexterity literature, we specify the nature of the tensions (between academic and commercially‐oriented activities) at both organizational and individual levels of analysis, and how these can be resolved. We develop hypotheses linking specific aspects of the organization and the individual researcher to the likelihood of their research projects generating commercial outcomes, and we test them using a novel dataset of 207 Research Council‐funded projects, combining objective data on project outcomes with the perceptions of principal investigators. We show that the tension between academic and commercial demands is more salient at the level of the individual researcher than at the level of the organization. Universities show evidence that they are able to manage the tensions between academic and commercial demands, through for example their creation of ‘dual structures’. At the individual level, on the other hand, the tensions are more acute, so that the people who deliver commercial outcomes tend to be rather different to those who are accustomed to producing academic outcomes.