Proactive versus reactive behaviors : Do the motivations to patent influence the number of patents invented by academic inventors ?

In this paper we distinguish between two motivations that academic scientists may adopt when dealing with patenting activities: a proactive one, where scientists are patent enthusiastic, do believe in the entrepreneurial university and are actively looking for patents. Second, a reactive one, where scientists are more reluctant to patent and, if they however patent, it is only because they are constrained to do so by the context. We use an original dataset on 173 French academic inventors (in life science and electronics and engineering sciences) in order to investigate whether the scientist’s motivations to patent affect the number of patents she invents. Our econometric results indicate that the proactive type of motivations does not dominate the reactive one in order to explain the number of invented patents. In particular, a very positive perception of university patenting or a reported willingness to perform patentable research does not lead to more invented patents. Conversely, past patenting experiences seem to matter a lot: academic inventors, who have already experienced successful technology transfer due to patents, are more likely to invent patents. Some slight differences emerge across scientific disciplines. Our results provide insights for building appropriate managerial tools to give support to scientists and technology transfer offices, which are looking to increase the number of academic patents.