More Disclosure, Better Inventions? Commercial Potential in University Invention Disclosures

Abstract

Encouraging researchers to disclose inventions to Technology Transfer Offices (TTOs) is central to universities’ research commercialization efforts, and disclosure counts are often treated as a key performance metric. Yet whether higher disclosure rates are associated with the entry of more commercially promising inventions into the TTO pipeline remains unclear. We theorize four scenarios, each predicting a different relationship between rising disclosure activity and the extent to which inventions with higher commercial potential are more likely to be disclosed. To explore these scenarios empirically we employ a novel publication-level, ex-ante measure of commercial potential (Masclans et al. 2025). We apply the measure to a unique internal disclosure dataset matched to scientific publications from a major U.S. engineering university that experienced a marked change in its disclosure environment beginning in 2022. We find inventions with higher commercial potential are much more likely to be disclosed. Furthermore, this sorting became substantially stronger in the post-2022 disclosure environment. Inventor-level analyses indicate that the change was primarily due to disclosures by researchers whose publications had high commercial potential but who had not previously engaged with the TTO, and by star scientists who were already disclosing and became more active during this period. These findings suggest that higher disclosure activity can be associated with stronger selection of commercially promising inventions in the disclosure pipeline.