Mistaking dawn for dusk: quantophrenia and the cult of numerology in technology transfer analysis

How can scientometrics be made into a more effective tool, with predictive as well as analytical capabilities? A recurring problem in quantitative research is the tendency to grasp for explanatory factors, when they do not appear endogenously from factor analysis, resulting in spurious correlations. We suggest that this obfuscatory phenomenon has appeared in university patent analysis but a remedy is at hand. Moreover, the so-called ‘‘Bayh–Dole effect’’ is but one narrow indicator of a broader transformation of academia into a driver of transition from industrial to knowledge-based society, characterized by interdependent institutional spheres, an emerging societal mode that we have elsewhere analyzed as the Triple Helix of university-industry-government interactions (Etzkowitz and Leydesdorff 2000). Future economic growth is expected from societal investment in research and new ways are being sought to transfer technology from research institutes to the economy (Bozeman 2000; Rothaermel et al. 2007). Successive transformations of university technology transfer have brought the university into closer contact with the business world and introduced elements of business practice into the university. There has been a shift in focus of such offices in recent decades from a legal to marketing, and, more recently, to an innovation approach. University spinoff firms have carried elements of academic practice into the business world even as persons with cognate business and academic experience have become Professors of Practice and entrepreneurs in residence. Nevertheless, despite some homologies, universities and firms have distinctly different remits and modes of operation (Cole 2010). Professors and students, even when they are characterized as ‘‘employees,’’ have a quite different relationship to their employer than employees of a firm. They typically have a