Fall 2016 Project Ideas Page

Simple Things

• Weekly blog post summarizing news/McNair posts in entrepreneurship and innovation
  • Could be automated by computer science interns?
• Stats (quarterly?) on Houston/Texas
  • Patents
  • VC
  • Small business
• Big deals (notable $$$) in Houston/Texas
• New laws and litigation surrounding entrep/innovation

Ideas for projects

• Small business lending in Houston/Texas
  • Get SBA lending data over time
  • Relate to some econ metric -- i.e. price of oil, real estate
• Innovation in the Oil and Gas Industry
  • Break S&P 500 into some number of related industries
    • Count patents for firms in each (patent data)
    • Count acquisitions and mergers for firms in each (SDC)
    • Get R&D spending data (from compstat)
  • For reading/research/general knowledge: read about open vs closed innovation as described by Henry Chesborough
• University Patenting
  • ID universities as assignees in patent data
  • Measure change over time, data as a funciton of size, prestige, geographic location, endowment
  • AUM data on liscensing
  • Relation to NSF/NIH/etc
  • for reading/researching/general knowledge: read about Bayh-Dole Act