Technology Commercialization through Sustainable Knowledge Sharing from University-Industry Collaborations, with a Focus on Patent Propensity

The process of technology commercialization involves numerous hurdles, from the original idea to its translation into the market. Patenting brings to light the research activities created through university-industry collaborations. This paper explores patent propensity, as related to commercializing innovative activities resulting from collaborations between universities and regional small and medium enterprises (SMEs). To achieve our aims, we apply a robust regression analysis to test five research hypotheses using firm-level data on 263 firms located in the Gwangju region of Korea. Our empirical results show that certain industry characteristics are negatively related to the propensity to patent. In addition, and contrary to expectations, it is found that the InnoBiz firms that the government designated as innovative SMEs are not performing any differently from general firms. It is only the CEO’s academic credentials that are found to be positively related to propensity to patent. From the findings, we can conclude that patenting propensity is likely related to CEOs’ managerial strategies rather than the particular characteristics of the technology in question. We also suggest new technology commercialization related with universities’ policies and support to promote regional SMEs including conglomerated firms as well as universities.