A patent-based analysis of the evolution of basic, mission-oriented, and applied research in European universities.

The dynamics of basic and applied research at university and industry have steadily changed since the Eighties, with the private sector reducing its investments in science and universities experiencing significant remodelling in the governance of their funding. While studies have focussed on documenting these changes in industry, less attention has been paid to observe the trajectories of basic and applied research in universities. This work contributes to fill this gap by looking at the evolution of publicly funded research that has been patented by universities between 1978 and 2015. First, we adopt a critical perspective of the basic versus applied dichotomy and identify patents according to three typologies of research: basic, mission-oriented, and applied research. Second, we describe the evolution of these three typologies in universities compared to industry. Our results show that over the years, patents from academic research that was publicly funded have become more oriented towards pure basic research, with mission-oriented basic research and pure applied research decreasing from the late 1990s. These results complement and extend the literature on basic and applied research dynamics in the private sector. By introducing mission-oriented research as a type of basic research with consideration of use, the work problematises the basic and applied research dichotomy and provides insights into the evolution of academic research focus, offering a more complex picture of how university research contributes to industry and broader social value creation.

Dataset from a qualitative survey on Ph.D. entrepreneurship in Italy.

This article describes questionnaire data on Ph.D. (Doctor of Philosophy) entrepreneurship in Italy. The data includes (i) information recently collected via a questionnaire survey on Ph.D. students; (ii) background information on Italian academic institutions attended by students. We present here some descriptive statistics of the variables included in the dataset. The database includes the responses of 906 students. Students provided information on their employment condition, on their family background and opinions on the Ph.D. course and the institution they attended. Information on regional characteristics and on university policies are also included.