EAGER: What is the Economic Impact of NSF-Funded Research? Connecting the Dots Between Scientific Discovery and Entrepreneurship

广义上讲，企业家精神是发现、评估和利用有利可图的机会。在美国国家科学基金会资助的科学和工程研究的背景下，创业的范围可以从研究生根据通过美国国家科学基金会资助的研究生研究奖学金项目获得的知识创办一家新公司，到研究人员通过美国国家科学基金会资助的中心获得新技术的许可。这个项目的重点是确定nsf资助的科学和工程研究中的创业案例，这将有助于更好地记录nsf资助的研究的经济影响（例如，新公司的成立，技术许可），以及更好地了解科学发现导致创业的条件。本项目将调查美国国家科学基金会资助的研究项目（第一年）所从事的创业活动的情况，并对这些项目（第二年）的代表性样本进行定性访谈。这项研究的目的是在专利之外，拓宽衡量nsf资助研究的经济影响的方法。这些措施包括基于研究成立的新公司，在研究期间开发的硬件和软件被纳入商业产品，以及来自研究的技术被授权给公司。除了进一步加深对企业家精神的科学理解之外，这项研究的一个潜在的变革性成果是发现NSF可以更好地支持企业家精神的方法，从而增加科学和工程研究对经济影响的潜力。此外，在美国寻找培育初创企业和创造就业机会的新途径之际，识别成功的研究人员使用的做法，可能会在日益知识密集型的经济中促进研究人员的创业精神。

Broadly defined, entrepreneurship is the discovery, evaluation, and exploitation of profitable opportunities. In the context of NSF-funded science and engineering research, entrepreneurship can range from a graduate student starting a new company based on knowledge gained through an NSF-funded graduate research fellowship program to researchers licensing a new technology developed through an NSF-funded center. This project focuses on identifying examples of entrepreneurship in NSF-funded science and engineering research, which will help better document the economic impact of NSF-funded research (e.g., new companies started, technology licensed) as well as better understand the conditions under which scientific discovery results in entrepreneurship. This project will survey the landscape of entrepreneurial activities engaged in by NSF-funded research projects (year 1) and conduct qualitative interviews with a representative sample of these projects (year 2). The research aims to broaden, beyond patents, the ways in which the economic impact of NSF-funded research is measured. These measures include new companies that are started based on the research, hardware and software developed during the research that are incorporated into commercial products, and technology originating from the research that is licensed to a company. In addition to furthering the scientific understanding of entrepreneurship, a potentially transformative outcome of this research is discovering ways that NSF could better support entrepreneurship, thus increasing the potential for economic impact from science and engineering research. Furthermore, identifying practices that successful investigators use could boost entrepreneurship among researchers in an increasingly knowledge-intensive economy, as the US looks for new ways to foster start-up companies and create jobs.