Department of Political Science

Special Issue: “Academic institutions and the changing entrepreneurial finance landscape”

Open science partnerships: A potential supplement to academic entrepreneurial finance?
Open Science Partnerships (OSPs) have emerged in recent years as a novel form of public-private research collaborations that adhere to openness principles, including the absence of intellectual property rights. This paper explores how OSPs may become a supplementary mechanism that contributes to furthering academic entrepreneurial finance in that they create an environment favourable for potential commercial applications and for attracting subsequent investments. OSPs may help mitigate some of the challenges associated with the commercial exploitation and diffusion of new technologies. We illustrate our argument through case studies of two OSPs, the Structural Genomics Consortium and the Open Discovery Innovation Network.