This 60-page report reports on trends in how often and it what areas engineering faculty and staff are filing invention disclosure reports, one of the first steps in developing university technology assets. The report is based on data from approximately 180 faculty and administrators predominantly drawn from the world’s top 50 engineering doctoral programs.
Data in the report is broken out by more than 10 criteria including but not limited to: engineering program rank, title of survey participant, field of engineering, age, gender, and salary level of the survey participant and other variables.
The report gives data on the percentage of faculty and staff who have ever filed an invention disclosure report, the number filed in the past two years, and the expected number of filings in the next two years.
The study also presents detailed data on the catalyst for invention disclosure report filings, pinpointing influences such as professors and colleagues, technology transfer administrators, and other influencers.
The highly granular nature of the data enables the report’s readers to answer such questions as: how does the level of invention disclosure activity in mechanical engineering compare to biomedical engineering? What is the level of activity or male vs. female researchers? How do non-USA programs compare to US programs? How about professors vs. associate and assistant professors, or staff engineers?
Just a few of the study’s many findings are that:
It was nearly three times more likely for survey participants in the USA to have filed an invention disclosure report than those from other countries, predominantly the UK, Australia, NZ and Canada.
Female researchers were much more likely than men to be self-motivated and much less likely to be acting on the urging of a colleague or a university official when filing an invention disclosure report.
The submission of invention disclosure reports peaked in the 50-59 year old age group.