History of Physics Entrepreneurship

物理创业史

• 批准号: 0849616
• 负责人: R. Joseph Anderson
• 金额: $ 29.54万
• 依托单位: American Institute of Physics
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Continuing Grant
• 财政年份: 2009
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2009-05-01 至 2013-04-30
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=0849616&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: History; Physics; Entrepreneurship

This project funded by NSF's Science, Technology, and Society Program is a study of physics-based entrepreneurship, meaning the development of research-based startup companies by groups including PhD physicists. The proposed study builds on previous work by the PI, the successful History of Physicists in Industry project, which was completed in 2007 with support from NSF. In the earlier study identification was made of the increased use of corporate laboratories to assess technologies brought to the market by small startups, rather than to develop new technologies internally. The role of large corporations is now relatively well understood; this study seeks to further develop an understanding of entrepreneurial physics-based startups. It represents an effort to explore and develop documentation strategies that allow companies to identify and preserve historically valuable records and make them accessible to researchers in the future.Physics entrepreneurship includes not just an organization founded by a PhD physicist, but also knowledge or intellectual property about the physical world and skills in working with manipulating the physical world that creates commercial value in the marketplace. The project seeks to uncover historical trends as well as current developments by interviewing physicists who founded or shared in the founding of some thirty-plus startups and other staff involved in the founding and/or research of these companies. Our interviews will include five startups prior to the 1990s that have since become established companies, five startups that failed during the dot-com boom, five startups subsequently acquired by larger corporations, and about fifteen currently developing startups founded since about 1990. Some physicists have brought their understanding of the physical nature of the world to the creation and manufacture of new technologies. Others have focused on the creation and evaluation of intellectual property and its application across a broad spectrum of businesses, serving as consultants and licensors of intellectual property. And some physicist entrepreneurs develop high tech companies where the company itself is the product to be acquired by larger companies needing its intellectual property and skill sets. Interviews with PhD physicists who have founded or partnered in the founding of small hi-tech startups, as well as other research will facilitate understanding the changing dynamics of these operations from the perspective of the founders and their dynamic role in the intellectual property marketplace. At the completion of this project, eighty to ninety question set interviews including interviews with at least thirty founders of physics-based startups will have been acquired. The findings will eventually be published in professional journals and on the Web.This study is important for understanding the role of startups in knowledge creation within industry and further investigating the changing patterns of research and development organizations and funding within the industrial community.

该项目由NSF的科学、技术和社会计划资助，是一项基于物理的创业研究，意味着由包括博士物理学家在内的团体发展基于研究的初创公司。这项拟议的研究建立在PI之前的工作基础上，PI是工业物理学家的成功历史项目，该项目于2007年在NSF的支持下完成。在早些时候的研究中，发现越来越多地使用公司实验室来评估小型初创公司带到市场上的技术，而不是内部开发新技术。大公司的作用现在相对较好地被理解；这项研究试图进一步发展对以创业物理学为基础的初创企业的理解。它代表着探索和开发文档策略的努力，这些策略允许公司识别和保存历史上有价值的记录，并使研究人员将来可以访问它们。物理创业不仅包括由博士物理学家创建的组织，还包括有关物理世界的知识或知识产权，以及操纵物理世界以在市场上创造商业价值的工作技能。该项目寻求通过采访创建或分享了约30多家初创公司的物理学家以及参与这些公司的创建和/或研究的其他工作人员来揭示历史趋势和当前的发展。我们的访谈将包括五家在20世纪90年代之前成立的初创公司，5家在互联网热潮中失败的初创公司，5家后来被更大的公司收购的初创公司，以及大约15家目前正在发展中的初创公司，这些公司成立于1990年左右。一些物理学家将他们对世界物理本质的理解带到了新技术的创造和制造中。其他人则侧重于知识产权的创造和评估及其在广泛的企业中的应用，充当知识产权的顾问和许可人。一些物理学家企业家发展高科技公司，在这些公司中，公司本身就是需要其知识产权和技能的大公司收购的产品。对创办或参与创建小型高科技初创企业的博士物理学家的采访以及其他研究将有助于从创始人的角度了解这些运营的动态变化及其在知识产权市场中的动态角色。在这个项目完成时，将获得80到90个问题集采访，其中包括对至少30名以物理为基础的初创公司创始人的采访。研究结果最终将发表在专业期刊和网站上。这项研究对于理解初创企业在行业内知识创造中的作用，以及进一步调查行业内研发组织和资金模式的变化非常重要。