Abstract
Academic entrepreneurship means to start up an enterprise based on the intellect assets generated by academic institutions. Several literatures indicated that exploitation of research results in universities did make a great impact on economics. However, the intention of academic entrepreneurship is general low in Taiwan. The difficulties could mostly lie on the complex processes of cross-disciplinary knowledge integration in academic entrepreneurship and specific context of academic entrepreneurs. For most technological personnel specialized in inventing new knowledge in universities, entrepreneurship could be an ad-hoc and unfamiliar mission. The research objective of this study is to identify the processes and factors of cross-disciplinary knowledge integration in academic entrepreneurship. Entrepreneurs can thereby facilitate the initial phase of entrepreneurship, and thus can catch up with the market pace to commercialize their invented technology. Academic entrepreneurship signifies to establish an enterprise based on the intellect assets invented by academic institutions. In America, academic entrepreneurships have been trending up, especially after the Bayh-Dole Act issued in 1980. The Bayh-Dole Act enables universities to own intelligence property rights (IPRs) of their research results which were originally possessed by the government. Therefore, universities have the authorities to transfer the discovered assets into industries and thus contribute to produce actual economical values for their nation. According to Chiesa and Piccaluga (2000), exploitation of research results in universities did make a great impact on economics.