Discussion in the scholarly literature about partnerships between entrepreneurs and universities for the creation of technological spinouts, and for helping universities to extract more value from their technology-related intellectual property (IP), is lively. However, the literature exhibits a gap in understanding how business schools may participate in the process of technology commercialization by facilitating the creation of intellectual property rights. In this conceptual paper, we seek to fill this gap in three ways. First, we offer some novel conceptual insights by studying the partnership between technical universities and entrepreneurs using a multi-level approach, incorporating a phenomenological research method, through the lenses of several established theoretical perspectives from the domains of economics, social science, and management: the division of labor, motivation, the nature of the firm, organization, and IP. Second, we develop a working hypothesis focused on learning reinforcement through multiple organizational levels that predicts how business schools may play a prominent role in technology commercialization, together with the theoretical conditions under which they may do so. Third, we offer an IP management model under which business schools, as such, may create and appropriate financial value by generating innovation-related IP that may be transferred to enterprises. Our research reveals a misalignment between promising approaches to university-based technological innovation suggested by normative theory and typical approaches associated with extant practice; and it also highlights a strategic issue, which is that the performance of most universities in the domain of technology transfer is disappointing. We suggest a way to address this misalignment, and this strategic issue, which is through the establishment of what we label as "Technology Innovation Laboratories" in business schools-analogous to technical laboratories usually associated with technical universities-that could generate various types of product- or service-related IP. This type of intellectual property-typically different from invention IP, and which we label here as "business IP"-could be exchanged for equity in spinouts or royalties from licensing, similar to the manner in which the invention IP of technical universities is usually commercialized.

“Technological innovation” has become a catch phrase of contemporary policy making for governments, corporations and academic organizations. For many it has become an article of faith that technological innovation is the key to solving economic, social and environmental problems, but the formula for success is not obvious. The phrase “science and technology” rolls off the tongues of policy makers, managers and researchers spontaneously, as if this is the natural order of things, but why is the converse phrase “technology and science” so rarely encountered? The orthodox view appears to be that technology is applied science, or that technological change flows naturally from scientific progress. However, what if popular preconceptions about the relationship between science and technology are misplaced? This paper addresses the question of the fundamental relationship between technology and science by first reviewing pertinent literature from the field of science, technology and society (STS) studies and by then investigating empirically the nature of the relationship in the field of energy conversion technology. It draws policy-making implications for investment in technology and science. We propose the theory of technology-conditioned science as a plausible and credible counterweight to extant commonplace presumptions that science is the precursor of technology.