Open Access funded by Economic and Social Research Council, under a Creative Commons license.-- et al.A considerable body of work highlights the relevance of collaborative research, contract research, consulting and informal relationships for university-industry knowledge transfer. We present a systematic review of research on academic scientists' involvement in these activities to which we refer as 'academic engagement'. Apart from extracting findings that are generalisable across studies, we ask how academic engagement differs from commercialisation, defined as intellectual property creation and academic entrepreneurship. We identify the individual, organisational and institutional antecedents and consequences of academic engagement, and then compare these findings with the antecedents and consequences of commercialisation. Apart from being more widely practiced, academic engagement is distinct from commercialisation in that it is closely aligned with traditional academic research activities, and pursued by academics to access resources supporting their research agendas. We conclude by identifying future research needs, opportunities for methodological improvement and policy interventions. © 2012 Elsevier B.V.We acknowledge support from the DIME Network, funded by the 6th Framework Programme of the European Commission (CIT3-CT-2005-513396). Additional support was provided by IMIT (Institute of Management of Innovation and Technology), the Advanced Institute of Management Research (AIM) (RES-331-27-0063), the UK Innovation Research Centre (UK-IRC, RES-598-28-0001), University of Gothenburg, Alma Graduate School/University of Bologna and ANR (ANR-06-APPR-003).Peer Reviewe

Studies have demonstrated the importance of scientific research for innovation and economic performance at the firm and regional levels, and policymakers have extensively supported the commercialization of public science. However, we still lack theoretical and empirical evidence on the link between the commercialization of public science and broader societal impacts. Specifically, despite a large body of evidence on the determinants of science commercialization, mainly addressed in the literature on academic entrepreneurship, the consequences of such activities remain less explored. In this article, we seek to fill this void by viewing science commercialization as a means rather than as a final outcome. Instead of mapping the direct outcomes of the science commercialization process, mostly achieved through entrepreneurial activities, we see science commercialization as an enabler of broader societal impacts. This article outlines a research agenda on the societal impacts of science commercialization by extending current theories, data, and methods and exploring the need to consider ethical concerns and who is benefiting from these impacts.

The creation of spin-off firms from universities is seen as an important mechanism for the commercialization of research, and hence the overall contribution from universities to technological development and economic growth. Governments and universities are seeking to develop framework conditions that are conductive to spin-off creation. The most prevalent of such initiatives are legislative changes at national level and the establishment of technology transfer offices at university level. The effectiveness of such initiatives is debated, but empirical evidence is limited. In this paper, we analyze the full population of universities in Italy, Norway, and the UK; three countries adopting differing approaches to framework conditions, to test whether national- and university-level initiatives have an influence on the number of spin-offs created and the quality of these spin-offs. Building on institutional theory and using multilevel analysis, we find that changes in the institutional framework conditions at both national and university levels are conductive to the creation of more spin-offs, but that the increase in quantity is at the expense of the quality of these firms. Hence, the effect of such top–down changes in framework conditions on the economic impact from universities seems to be more symbolic than substantive.