Build, rent or sell: Options for commercializing new technologies arising from university research

The methods available to commercialize new technologies arising from university research have traditionally been thought of as licensing and start-ups. Drawing on economic theories of the firm and on accounting and legal concepts, we propose an alternative view of the options for commercialization that focuses on the substance of the available methods rather than their legal form. Specifically, we suggest that there are three primary methods of commercializing new technologies arising from university research: 1) Build - creating a new business based on the technology, 2) Rent - ongoing development and marketing of the technology to established firms that use the technology in their businesses and 3) Sell disposition of the technology to an established firm. We provide examples of each of these methods and provide criteria for distinguishing between them. Finally, we attempt to demonstrate the usefulness of this new scheme by reframing existing research to identify a number of unexplored areas and areas of inconsistent findings and by developing a set of testable propositions related to the proposed scheme.