The effects of academic incubators on university innovation

In this article, we analyze the impact of academic incubators on the quality of innovations produced by U.S. research‐intensive academic institutions. We show that establishing a university‐affiliated incubator is followed by a reduction in the quality of university innovations. The conclusion holds when we control for the endogeneity of the decision to establish an incubator using the presence of incubators at peer institutions as an instrument. We also document a reduction in licensing income following the establishment of an incubator. The results suggest that university incubators compete for resources with technology transfer offices and other campus programs and activities, such that the useful outputs they generate can be partially offset by reductions in innovation elsewhere