Motivation Factors on Academic Research Commercialisation

Universities in the 21st century are racing to commercialise their research results, as compared to traditional universities which focused merely in sharing knowledge in their research and development activities. Besides generating income for the university, academics whom involved in research commercialisation activities might gain some portion of the revenues from the research products that had been successfully commercialized. Therefore, it is important to understand the motivation factors of academic researchers because they are the main player in the commercialisation activity. Many scholars discussed the extrinsic motivation, less discussed about the intrinsic motivation, and even lesser discussed the prosocial motivation in academic research commercialisation. Thus, this study aimed to further understand the role of each motivation factors in accelerating the academic research commercialisation activities. In achieving the study’s objective, this study utilised the Self-Concordance Theory as the study’s underpinning theory and applied a qualitative case study approach. The informants in the study were the academic researchers from four Malaysian technical universities. The study revealed that the academic researchers were motivated by the three motivation factors in supporting their commercialisation activities. This study had found out a new definition of each factor, as compared to previous studies. It shows the type of motivation factors might be bounded by the culture and social environment of the academic researchers. It is hoped that, by knowing the right motivation factors for the academic researchers, the policy makers will execute the best strategy to motivate the novice or unexperienced academic researchers to commercialise their research results.