The Impacts of Commercialization-Oriented Science and Technology Programs on University Research: The Case of the U.S. National Nanotechnology Initiative

We examine how the National Nanotechnology Initiative (NNI), a recent U.S. government’s science and technology (S&T) program launched in 2000, impacts the nature of university research in nanotechnology. We characterize the NNI as a policy intervention that targets the commercialization of technology and a focused research direction to promote national economic growth. As such, we expect that the NNI has brought about unintended consequences in the direction of university-industry knowledge flows and the characteristics of university research output in nanotechnology. Using the difference-in-differences analysis of the U.S. nanotechnology patents filed between 1996 and 2007, we find that, for the U.S. universities, the NNI has increased knowledge inflows from the industry, diminished the branching-out to novel technologies, reduced the research scope, and decreased the likelihood of technological breakthroughs, as compared to other U.S. and non-U.S. research institutions. Our findings suggest that, at least in the case of the NNI, targeted S&T programs of the government may increase the efficiency of university research, but potentially do so at a price.