Informants have reflected on two main aspects of challenges associated with academic involvement in commercial activities: first is the compatibility of academic and
entrepreneurial activities; the other is associated with the industry interest and capacity to exploit academic inventions in Norway. As to the first, one of the informants argues that entrepreneurship is as important as their academic career. Therefore, from their perspective,
both can be regarded as two equally vital missions of a researcher. This attitude is clearly expressed by professor a:
I don’t work within the field where academic work is the only focus and commercialization is a threat; it’s rather the way around. I work in the field where commercialization is a norm.
Another respondent (professor d) also emphasizes that in his field, innovation is all over the place. According to him, in his discipline problem-solving is considered the main goal:
We are here basically because innovation is important, would it be either knowledge transfer to existing industry or creating new industry… Although we do basic research, we are in applying setting where we are trying to solve problems and challenges for society.
So, for the respondents, general skepticism towards compatibility of entrepreneurship and academic career is not a case. However, they mention that commercial activities are really time-consuming and they have to work hard to make it work. For a professor b, combining academic work with commercial activities has meant working up to 70-80 hours a week which entails putting a lot extra effort in what he did. Also professor c argues that it is a lot of work to do both teaching, supervising the students on the one hand, and commercializing research outputs on the other. For him, this eventually results in that everything goes very slowly. In his opinion, the solution to this problem can be to get more funds to employ people that can do some work under the professor‟s supervision. However, he claims that it is difficult at this point to get such funds. Lack of people and money in commercial activities is also underlined by professor a. She maintains that there is a lot of work to do, but because of the fact that they do not have enough people and money, they have to do some
adjustments to the real picture and do what their resources let them do.
According to professor d, time is the main challenge for researchers at his department. He furthers that the capacity of the department at this point is not enough to take care of huge numbers of students and, consequently, it is difficult for an academic to find time for
commercial activities. Another challenge for him is associated with the necessity of building an innovation culture at the UO in order to involve more people in these activities and in this way, get out a full commercial potential.
As discussed in a theoretical chapter of the thesis, “absorptive capacity” of the industry is often argued to be an important barrier to successful knowledge transfer from research sector to industry (Decter et al., 2007). It has also been mentioned that in case of Norway where industrial sector is comprised of SMEs, a lack of industrial interest in academic inventions can be a crucial hindrance to successful commercialization of academic research. In fact, this often results in licensing of Norwegian inventions abroad (Bugge et al., 2003). Professor c shares similar experience from his past.
When we licensed our patent abroad, it was already 10-12 years old and no Norwegian company had been interested in it. We had a couple of other companies interested in the same patent, also international…
However, the professor hopes that this situation can change in future and he points to some positive signs, as the project his research group is working on now has already attracted a Norwegian company which might become the future licensee of the patent.
The same positive development regarding the growing interest from the industry sector towards academic research at his department is claimed by professor d. He puts it in the following way: I think we have doubled revenues or turn-over on industry projects for the last 3-4 years. On the other hand, professor a can not confirm the same tendency out of her experience. Rather, she claims that it is very hard to find a company that would pay for a patent. According to her, small companies have their own patents and they do not look around for other people’s patents. That‟s why she does not think it is a good strategy to patent and wait for a licensee.
Thus, commercial activities are perceived as very natural within the fields where informants work. They all agree that it is much work to combine entrepreneurship activities with an academic career and that they need to work much to reach their goals. Therefore, one of the main challenges is a lack of time; another barrier is associated with a lack of finances for hiring some people who could assist in the activities, and, not least, covering the expenses associated with commercial activities.