History of Physics Entrepreneurship

American Institute Of Physics, College Park MD

Investigators

Abstract

This project funded by NSF's Science, Technology, and Society Program is a study of physics-based entrepreneurship, meaning the development of research-based startup companies by groups including PhD physicists. The proposed study builds on previous work by the PI, the successful History of Physicists in Industry project, which was completed in 2007 with support from NSF. In the earlier study identification was made of the increased use of corporate laboratories to assess technologies brought to the market by small startups, rather than to develop new technologies internally. The role of large corporations is now relatively well understood; this study seeks to further develop an understanding of entrepreneurial physics-based startups. It represents an effort to explore and develop documentation strategies that allow companies to identify and preserve historically valuable records and make them accessible to researchers in the future. Physics entrepreneurship includes not just an organization founded by a PhD physicist, but also knowledge or intellectual property about the physical world and skills in working with manipulating the physical world that creates commercial value in the marketplace. The project seeks to uncover historical trends as well as current developments by interviewing physicists who founded or shared in the founding of some thirty-plus startups and other staff involved in the founding and/or research of these companies. Our interviews will include five startups prior to the 1990s that have since become established companies, five startups that failed during the dot-com boom, five startups subsequently acquired by larger corporations, and about fifteen currently developing startups founded since about 1990. Some physicists have brought their understanding of the physical nature of the world to the creation and manufacture of new technologies. Others have focused on the creation and evaluation of intellectual property and its application across a broad spectrum of businesses, serving as consultants and licensors of intellectual property. And some physicist entrepreneurs develop high tech companies where the company itself is the product to be acquired by larger companies needing its intellectual property and skill sets. Interviews with PhD physicists who have founded or partnered in the founding of small hi-tech startups, as well as other research will facilitate understanding the changing dynamics of these operations from the perspective of the founders and their dynamic role in the intellectual property marketplace. At the completion of this project, eighty to ninety question set interviews including interviews with at least thirty founders of physics-based startups will have been acquired. The findings will eventually be published in professional journals and on the Web. This study is important for understanding the role of startups in knowledge creation within industry and further investigating the changing patterns of research and development organizations and funding within the industrial community.