評估與比較大學在專利發明上的知識利用績效

Abstract

大學在人類知識創造中扮演舉足輕重的角色，而這些知識如何利用在後續的創新和發明也值得關注。由於知識的隱性特質其流動和擴散不容易觀察，為衡量知識於發明的利用情形，本研究利用了專利文件中的科學知識引用，作為評估及比較大學的知識在後續利用的表現，以潛伏成長模型針對全球主要大學在1995年以及2005年，其論文發表被專利累積引用的成長狀況進行分析。本研究亦分析了學術知識在後續的產業利用上，是否受到了大學研究品質、產學合作，以及大學所處地理位置等屬性的牽動。本研究成果發現了，以上的因素對學術知識被後續專利發明的累積引用的成長曲線有顯著的影響，這些因素彼此間亦有交互作用存在。此外，並非所有的知名大學在論文發表被專利累積引用上皆表現良好。本研究據此提出相關的政策建議。

Universities have played an important role in knowledge creation, and it is of concern to see how universities perform in knowledge utilization. In the present article, an effective approach is proposed to evaluate and compare university performance in terms of knowledge utilization for patented inventions. Growth trajectories of the cumulative patent citations to scientific publications produced by individual universities are analyzed by using latent growth modeling. Moreover, we examine how the utilization of scientific knowledge created in 1995 and 2005 is affected by research impact and university-industry collaboration among the universities in Europe, North America, and East Asia. The results indicate that not all of the top 300 research universities in the world perform well in knowledge utilization for patented inventions. This study demonstrates that location and university-industry collaboration are two additional influential factors. The universities in North America are well ahead with respect to basic research. Keeping their leading roles in scientific research is crucial to downstream innovation. In Europe, the universities with higher research impact and higher degree of industry-academia collaboration perform the best in knowledge utilization. User involvement and industry-academia matching should be emphasized so that the values of scientific research could be added by practical benefits. In East Asia, in addition to enhancing research impact, the programs to facilitate industry-academia collaboration are important.