The report, Competitiveness and Innovative Capacity of the United States, said the pace of university patenting, licensing of technology to industry, and the proliferation of university?linked startup companies slowed starting in 2000, a slowdown that persisted after the brief recession of the early 2000s.
The US Department of Commerce has identified a slow-down in university‐linked start-up companies as a cause for concern in its latest report.
The report, Competitiveness and Innovative Capacity of the United States, said: "By the late 1980s, university patenting, licensing of technology to industry, and the proliferation of university‐linked startup companies all began to accelerate, reaching especially high growth rates in the late 1990s.
"However, the pace of these activities slowed starting in 2000, a slowdown that persisted after the brief recession of the early 2000s."
It then quoted as the footnote, a 2007 study by non-profit entrepreneurs group Kauffman Foundation, The University As Innovator: Bumps in the Road, that expressed concern about the commercialization focus of technology transfer offices (TTOs), rather than their desire to see ideas utilized.
The Kauffman study had in turn quoted University of Georgia research that the principal mechanism favored by most TTOs…
