Funded by a grant from the Ng Teng Fong Charitable Foundation, this is a follow-on from a pilot project funded by the NUS Business School HSS Seed Fund. This 2-year project commenced in July 2018 and will be carried out in collaboration with Tsinghua University. Recent public policy focus on university-industry collaboration has created a tension between the core university mission of university research and the “third mission” of contributing economic value and societal impact. This study frames the debate in the context of Stokes’ quadrant model, which postulates two motivations for scientific research: (a) furthering fundamental scientific understanding, and (b) addressing user problems. Using data on NUS, Tsinghua and Stanford University faculty members, the project examines the links between scientific motivation of individual researchers and the technology commercialization outcomes achieved. Comparative analysis between NUS and Tsinghua will examine the role of heterogeneous institutional structures. A proposed focal research area is talent mobility as a source of academic entrepreneurship, and how research motivation influences this relationship.