Narrating commercialisation: Swedish university researchers and outreach

This paper is a qualitative study of commercialisation activities in Swedish universities from the perspective of researchers. Our goal is twofold: (i) to elucidate researchers’ understanding of the meaning of concept of commercialisation and (ii) their reasons for engaging in this activity. By providing insight into researchers understanding and rationale for engaging in commercialisation activities, we hope to contribute to deepening understanding of commercialisation and ultimately improving practice. Our findings are that there is a significant amount of activity with respect commercialisation of research taking place within the Swedish universities studied. We found that contrary to the received view which has it that the social sciences and the humanities are also involved in commercialisation activities although researchers in this part of the academy rarely reported themselves as engaging in the commercialisation. We also found that regardless of disciplinary background, firm formation is the aspect of commercialisation to which researchers are most ambivalent.