Public Sector Entrepreneurship ─ U.S. Technology and Innovation Policy

Public sector entrepreneurship refers to innovative public policy initiatives that generate greater economic prosperity. These initiatives can transform a status quo economic environment into one that is more conducive to economic units engaging in creative and innovative activities in the face of uncertainty.

Public Sector Entrepreneurship traces the historical development of the concepts of private and public sector entrepreneurship and their connection to the separate notions of risk and uncertainty. Based on a formal conceptualization of these notions, the book illustrates throughout public sector entrepreneurship in practice using examples from U.S. technology and innovation policy.

Technology policy-policy to enhance the application of new knowledge, learned through science, to some known problem-and innovation policy-policy to enhance the commercialization of a technology-are quintessential examples of the public sector recognizing and exploiting opportunities to bring about change and efficiency. Using this concept of public sector entrepreneurship as the lens to view the Bayh-Dole Act of 1980, the Stevenson-Wydler Act of 1980, the R&E Tax Credit of 1981, Small Business Innovation Development Act of 1982, the National Cooperative Research Act of 1984, and the Omnibus Trade and Competitiveness Act of 1988 affords us the ability to find elements of commonality among these policies and to discuss their impact on the U.S. economy from the perspective of entrepreneurial action.

Dennis Leyden is Associate Professor of Economics at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro (UNCG). Current research focuses on public and private sector entrepreneurship and on the role of universities in furthering such. Past research includes work on public education funding equity and accountability. His books include Adequacy, Accountability, and the Future of Public Education Funding (Springer 2005) and Government's Role in Innovation (Kluwer 1992). He is privileged to have made plenary presentations at the Universitat de Barcelona, Universita di Torino, Universitat Augsburg, and the United Nations Economic Commission for Europe in Geneva, Switzerland.

Albert N. Link is Professor of Economics at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro (UNCG). Professor Link's research focuses on entrepreneurship, technology and innovation policy, the economics of R&D, and policy/program evaluation. He is currently the Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Technology Transfer. Among his more than 40 books, some of the more recent ones are: Handbook for University Technology Transfer (University of Chicago Press, in production), Valuing an Entrepreneurial Enterprise (Oxford University Press, 2012), and Public Goods, Public Gains (Oxford University Press, 2011). His other research consists of more than 130 peer-reviewed articles in such journals as the American Economic Review, the Journal of Political Economy, and the Review of Economics and Statistics. Among other accomplishments, Professor Link was tapped by the State Department of the United States in 2007 to serve as the U.S. Representative to the United Nation's Economic Commission for Europe (UNECE) in Geneva (2007-2012).