Gender Patterns In Academic Entrepreneurship

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J Technol Transf (2017) 42:763–794DOI 10.1007/s10961-016-9543-yGender patterns in academic entrepreneurshipMaria Abreu1 Vadim Grinevich2Published online: 21 December 2016 The Author(s) 2016. This article is published with open access at Springerlink.comAbstract Our study analyses the determinants of the gender gap in academicentrepreneurship among UK-based academics from across a wide range of academicdisciplines. We focus on spinout activity as a measure of academic entrepreneurship, andexplore the relevance of the different explanations for the gender gap. Our analysis is basedon a unique survey of UK academics conducted in 2008/2009. The survey provides microdata on over 22,000 academics in the sciences, social sciences, arts and humanities, acrossall higher education institutions in the UK. Our results show that female academics differfrom the male academics in the sample in important ways. Female academics are morelikely to be involved in applied research, to hold more junior positions, to work in thehealth sciences, social sciences, humanities and education, to have less prior experience ofrunning a business, and to feel more ambivalent about research commercialisation. All ofthese characteristics are correlated with lower rates of spinout activity. Using a nonparametric decomposition analysis, we show that certain combinations of characteristics ofmale academics have few or no matches to female academics, and these characteristicsexplain a large proportion of the gender gap.Keywords Academic entrepreneurship Gender gap Blinder–Oaxaca Non-parametricdecompositionJEL Classification O31 O32 L30 C80& Maria Abreuma405@cam.ac.ukVadim Grinevichv.grinevich@soton.ac.uk1Department of Land Economy, University of Cambridge, 19 Silver Street, Cambridge CB3 9EP,UK2Southampton Business School, University of Southampton, Highfield, Southampton SO17 1BJ, UK123

764M. Abreu, V. Grinevich1 IntroductionAcademic entrepreneurship, defined as the commercial application of academic research, isan increasingly important aspect of academic life. In most institutions, academicresearchers are strongly encouraged (or even required) to disclose their inventions to theuniversity, and to actively participate in the commercialisation of their research findings(Owen-Smith and Powell 2001; Agrawal and Henderson 2002; Murray 2002; Siegel et al.2003). However, several recent studies have highlighted the existence of a gender gap inacademic entrepreneurship. Female academics are less likely to disclose their inventions(Thursby and Thursby 2005), hold a patent (Whittington and Smith-Doerr 2005; Ding et al.2006) or create a new enterprise based on their research (Rosa and Dawson 2006). This issurprising given that the gender gap in other measures of academic productivity, such aspublishing, is closing (Xie and Shauman 2003).A number of possible explanations have been identified, including supply-side factorssuch as lack of industry experience, greater reliance of institutional support, lower levels ofseniority and choice of research area by female academics, and demand-side factors suchas lower visibility, exclusion from networks and gender discounting (Murray and Graham2007; Stephan and El-Ganainy 2007). The relevance of some of these factors, particularlythose relating to networks and lack of experience, have been confirmed by female academics as part of qualitative case-study interviews (Murray and Graham 2007). Moreover,there is significant quantitative evidence to show that personal and institutional characteristics, such as level of seniority, academic field and degree of institutional support, havean effect on academic entrepreneurship at all stages of the process (Stephan et al. 2007;Haeussler and Colyvas 2011). In particular, Colyvas et al. (2012) find that once a range ofpersonal and institutional characteristics are accounted for, there is no further gender gap inthe likelihood of disclosure of inventions, or in the likelihood that disclosures are convertedinto licenses.Running through the discussion in the literature are two issues of significance. First,there is now substantial evidence to suggest that rates of academic entrepreneurship aregreater in disciplines and fields which have a lower representation of female academics(Rosa and Dawson 2006). Similarly, academic entrepreneurship is greater among senioracademics with wide-ranging networks and experience of commercialisation, and anoverwhelmingly large proportion of those academics are male (Stephan and El-Ganainy2007). This raises the (as yet unresolved) question of whether female academics with lowerpropensities to engage in entrepreneurship are self-selecting into disciplines and careerpaths that further exclude them from entrepreneurial opportunities.Second, there is limited evidence on the entrepreneurial intentions and outcomes foracademics in disciplines other than the engineering, medicine and the physical sciences.An understanding of the commercialisation activities of academics in the arts, socialsciences and humanities is key to explaining the choices of female academics, and theirresulting career outcomes. For instance, academics in the creative arts are widely engagedin both consulting and the creation of enterprises based on academic research (Abreu andGrinevich 2014), but it is unclear how this affects the overall gender gap in academicentrepreneurship.This study aims to address both of these gaps in the literature by analysing the entrepreneurial activities of male and female academics based at a wide range of academicinstitutions and from a broad range of disciplines. We focus particularly on understandingwhy the choices of male and female academics differ, and use a non-parametric matching123

Gender patterns in academic entrepreneurship765procedure to analyse whether the entrepreneurial outcomes are different for male andfemale academics who are otherwise very similar in terms of their personal and institutional characteristics. We use the creation of enterprises based on university research (or‘‘spinouts’’) as our measure of academic entrepreneurship, as this is the most comparablemeasure across academic disciplines, and provides a clear parallel to measures ofentrepreneurship in the wider literature.The remainder of the paper is organised as follows. Section 2 provides an overview ofthe literature on the gender gap in academic entrepreneurship, and the possible explanations that have been advanced in the literature. Section 3 describes our data and methods.Section 4 provides descriptive evidence on the gender gap and the different explanationsidentified in the literature. Section 5 presents the evidence on the issue of self-selection.Section 6 concludes and discusses policy implications.2 Is there a gender gap in academic entrepreneurship?A large literature has explored the existence of a gender gap in scientific careers, bothwithin and outside academia. Women are less likely than men to study science at university, less likely to hold academic positions in the sciences, and significantly less likelyto hold senior faculty positions (Xie and Shauman 2003). Of the possible explanations forthese disparities, the most widely-held theory is the so-called ‘‘leaky pipeline’’ model,which argues that women drop out of the scientific career path at various points in theirlife, such as when choosing which subjects to study in school, transitioning to highereducation, continuing on to graduate school, applying for faculty positions, and achievingtenure. For instance, in a wide-ranging study of the gender gap in science, Xie andShauman (2003) find that most of the early-stage gender gaps (such as the proportion ofgirls choosing science subjects at high school) have closed over time, but that self-selectionby women into specific career paths that are seen as more compatible with family life haspersisted. This includes opting to specialise in fields that are seen as less competitive andmore amenable to flexible working, and for which there are fewer geographical constraints(particularly for women with school-age children). These choices are also reflected inmeasures of academic productivity, such as publishing. For instance, a number of studieshave found that female academics publish less often than their male counterparts, althoughthere is evidence to suggest that this gap has decreased over time (Cole and Zuckerman1984; Long 1992; Thursby and Thursby 2005), and that while female academics publishfewer articles, their publications have greater impact, as measured using citations (Long1992).The academic gender gap is also evident in a variety of measures of research commercialisation, from early-stage intentions, to patenting, licensing and the creation ofspinouts. Focusing on the early (or ‘‘ex-ante’’) stage of the process, Goel et al. (2015) usedata from a survey of German scientists working at Max Planck institutes, and find thatfemale academics have significantly lower propensities towards entrepreneurship, definedas a lower perceived attractiveness of creating a spinout. Similarly, using data on inventiondisclosures, Colyvas et al. (2012) find that US male faculty members are slightly morelikely to report an invention (37 vs. 32% for women), and significantly more likely toreport multiple inventions to their institution’s Technology Transfer Office (TTO) thantheir female colleagues. This corroborates earlier evidence by Thursby and Thursby(2005), which shows that despite few differences in publications by gender, the probability123

766M. Abreu, V. Grinevichof disclosure of an invention by a male academic is 43% higher than that of an individualacademic.Similar results have been found in the context of patenting, with significantly fewerfemale academics holding patents, relative to their male counterparts. For instance, usingdata US-based academic life scientists, Ding et al. (2006) find that 6% of women in thesample hold patents, versus 13% of the men. The likelihood that an individual academichas not patented up to a given year of their tenure is higher for women at all career stages,and the gender gap increases over time (Ding et al. 2006). Interesting, the academic contextappears to exacerbate this gender gap: Whittington and Smith-Doerr (2005) show that USmale scientists in industry patent 1.4 times as much as female scientists, but the gender gapis 2.3 times in academia. As with publishing, there is no difference in the quality of thepatents (as measured by patent citations) of male and female scientists (Whittington andSmith-Doerr 2005). Similar findings have been reported for other measures of academicentrepreneurship, such as spinouts. Although based on a relatively small sample, Rosa andDawson (2006) find that only 12% of the spinouts in their UK sample were founded bywomen. Female academics also tend to engage in fewer types of commercialisationactivity (Haeussler and Colyvas 2011).3 Disentangling the explanationsWhile the presence of a significant gender gap in academic entrepreneurship is welldocumented, there is still considerable controversy over the precise reasons for this gap,which in turn has implications for the appropriate policy responses. A number of studieshave investigated whether the gender gap remains once individual and institutional factorsare accounted for. This would imply that, although a gender gap in outcomes exists, we areable to explain it with reference to constraints, and resulting constrained choices, affectingfemale academics. For instance, Colyvas et al. (2012) find that gender has no significanteffect on the likelihood of disclosing inventions once individual characteristics (such asacademic rank, publishing activity, and external research funding) have been accountedfor. Similarly, the authors find no effect of gender on the likelihood that a disclosurebecomes a license (although there is a significant gender gap in the volume of disclosures).The authors conclude that the observed gender gap is due to ‘‘occupational and resourcefactors, reflecting the volume of engagement, rather than discrete proclivity to commercialize or the level of success in doing so’’ (Colyvas et al. 2012, p. 486).However, an unresolved issue that remains is the extent to which female academics areresponding to these constraints by modifying their behaviour, and whether their actionswould be different if their circumstances changed. This warrants a closer look at thepotential factors that could affect their engagement with entrepreneurship. Several studieshave discussed these factors in detail, and it is helpful to classify them into supply- anddemand-side explanations, following Stephan and El-Ganainy (2007) and Murray andGraham (2007). The supply-side explanations are those relating to the decision by theacademic to engage in entrepreneurial activities, and the resources available to do this(skills, networks, interest), while the demand-side explanations relate to discrimination andlack of opportunities.On the supply side, one important factor that affects entrepreneurship is the researcharea or academic field. As is well documented in the literature, some research areas aremore conducive to commercialisation than others. For instance, research in the life123

Gender patterns in academic entrepreneurship767sciences lends itself readily to commercial exploitation since fundamental research andapplied work tend to co-evolve (Murray 2002; Stephan et al. 2007). The same is true forother areas in science which primarily involve use-inspired basic research, that is, basicresearch that is also inspired by considerations of use (Stokes 1997). Conventional measures of academic entrepreneurship such as disclosures, patents, licences and spinouts areoften lower in the arts and humanities, partly because copyright and trademarks are morecommon forms of intellectual property protection in these disciplines, and partly becauseexternal engagement in the arts and humanities is generally based on more informal typesof activities such as giving public lectures and organising exhibitions (Abreu and Grinevich 2013, 2014). If women are over-represented in these disciplines (either through choiceor due to discrimination), and/or under-represented in areas of the sciences that are moreconducive to commercialisation, then this might help to explain the gender gap in the moretraditional measures of academic entrepreneurship.1A second supply-side explanation, which is also partly a demand-side explanation (interms of the issues of visibility that it raises), is the notion that women tend to occupy lesssenior positions in academia, and may therefore choose to focus on advancing their academic careers, rather than on engaging in entrepreneurial activities. This is particularly trueif women are constrained by family obligations that place severe pressures on their time(Ding et al. 2006; Rosa and Dawson 2006).2 Family circumstances, such as marital status,career breaks to look after children or elderly parents, and tied moves concerning the job oftheir partner, can have a significant effect on female entrepreneurship (Rosa and Dawson2006). A related issue is the importance of previous commercial or business experience inencouraging future entrepreneurial behaviour. Female academics tend to have lower levelsof exposure to industry and business, and therefore rely more heavily on the TTO (Stephanand El-Ganainy 2007). A number of studies have found support for the latter hypothesis,for instance, in case study interviews of female life-scientist, Ding et al. (2006) and Murrayand Graham (2007) find that women are more likely to rely on the TTO for industrycontacts, advice and encouragement. Similarly, Rosa and Dawson (2006) find that womenare more likely to cite the shortcomings of the TTO as an obstacle to commercialisation. Ina set of regressions to explain the propensity towards entrepreneurship, Goel et al. (2015)find that previous industry experience and ‘‘TTO needed for commercialisation’’ had largerpredicted effects for female than for male academics. Being based at a larger and moreprestigious university could mitigate some of the negative impacts of a lack of visibility toexternal partners, since larger, research-intensive institutions tend to have better established and more experienced TTOs (Siegel et al. 2007).A final set of supply-side explanations relate to psychological factors. There is evidenceto suggest that women tend to be more risk-averse than men in the context of business or1The importance of use-inspired basic research for commercialisation may be greater in some disciplines(such as the life sciences) than in others (such as the social sciences). This may be the case if, for instance,the dominant mode of academic entrepreneurship in the social sciences is consultancy work, which is likelyto follow more readily from applied research, rather than from use-inspired basic research. In order to allowfor these variations, we control for both the academic discipline and the type of research in our empiricalanalysis.2A related factor, often considered in the wider entrepreneurship literature, is the age of the potentialentrepreneur. Life cycle theories suggest that early career researchers focus on research and teaching inorder to gain tenure, while older, more senior, academics are less constrained and have more time to devoteto commercialisation (Carayol 2007; Levin and Stephan 1991; Link et al. 2007; Stephan et al. 2007). Olderacademics are also more likely to have the wide-ranging networks required to identify and developentrepreneurial opportunities. This factor is closely related to academic position (or seniority), as shown bythe correlation matrix in Table 19 (in the Appendix).123

768M. Abreu, V. Grinevichfinancial ventures (Eckel and Grossman 2008; Croson and Gneezy 2009; Borghans et al.2009). This may lead them to avoid potentially riskier entrepreneurial activities such asspinouts, and instead opt for less formal methods of commercialisation (such as consultancy work), or to avoid entrepreneurial activities altogether. Related to this is the findingthat women tend to dislike competitive behaviour, and therefore avoid activities perceivedto involve competition with their peers (Murray and Graham 2007). The literature has alsofound that women are less likely to actively seek to ‘‘sell’’ their research, and numerousstudies document that female academics believe they are left out of entrepreneurial ventures due to ‘‘not being asked’’ (Rosa and Dawson 2006; Murray and Graham 2007). Inaddition, there is evidence that women feel more ambivalent towards the ethics of thecommercialisation process (Murray and Graham 2007), although this factor may bechanging as more PhD students and junior faculty are exposed to commercial links fromthe outset of their careers (Ding et al. 2006).On the demand side, the explanations revolve around the level of interest of externalpartners in the entrepreneurial ventures of female academics. Given that fewer femaleacademics have previous commercial experience (as discussed above), we might expectthat their networks include fewer contacts within industry or business, which might make itmore difficult to ‘‘sell’’ a patent or business idea. Female academics also tend to have fewerPhD students, and are therefore less likely to become involved in entrepreneurial venturesthrough requests from former students (Murray 2004). The lack of wide-ranging networksbeen found in qualitative research to be one of the biggest constraints to femaleentrepreneurship (Murray 2004; Ding et al. 2006). In addition, women may face difficultiesin raising finance for their ventures, partly because their lower academic rank makes themless visible to potential partners (Rosa and Dawson 2006), and partly due to discrimination,since venture capitalists tend to be male, and may have a ‘‘higher comfort level with menthan with women and

Academic entrepreneurship, defined as the commercial application of academic research, is an increasingly important aspect of academic life. In most institutions, academic . and the gender gap increases over time (Ding et al. 2006). Interesting, the academic context

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