Dr. Norman Borlaug, known as the “Father of the Green Revolution,” would have turned 100 on March 25 this year. He dedicated his life to feeding the world by improving the health and yields of cereal crops. To honor his legacy a Borlaug Summit on Wheat for Food Security set out to continue his work throughout the world.
EMAC fellow, Christos Kolympiris, presented joint-work with Ken Zahringer and Nicholas Kalaitzandonakes at the Copenhagen Conferences on Innovation and Entrepreneurship on Jan. 19. Their research examines factors that influence the amount of time it takes for patents of entrepreneurial biotech firms to issue. The volume of patent applications that are in the queue for the United States Patent and Trademark Office to process have drastically increased, and similarly the time from application to grant date has more than doubled in the last 15 years. EMAC researchers analyzed the factors that cause such delays including the strategic incentives of emerging entrepreneurial life sciences firms.
The conference focused on entrepreneurial firm strategy, the drivers of innovation and the role of the public sector in fostering economic development. Other presenters in the conference included Professor Scott Stern (MIT), Alfonso Gambardella (Bocconi University) and Maryann Feldman (University of North Carolina).
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A long stream of academic literature has established that public funding towards research and development matters for economic growth because it relates to increases in innovation, productivity and the like. In the recently published article “Public Funds and Local Biotechnology Firm Creation “ Kolympiris, Kalaitzandonakes and Miller demonstrate that increases in the level of funding for biotechnology research provided by the Federal Government are also closely related to increases in the number of biotechnology firm births in the US. (more…)
In the recently published “The Size and Distribution of the Benefits from the Adoption of Biotech Soybean Varieties” EMAC researchers and collaborators from WAEES and the University of California Davis, measured the global economic impacts of herbicide tolerant soybeans in their first 15 years of adoption. Their analysis finds economic benefits amounting to a total of about US$46 billion. These include benefits to consumers and producers all over the world (86% of total) as well as benefits to the innovator (14%). (more…)