Educational Implications of University–Industry Technology Transfer

A considerable amount has been written concerning the effect technology transfer has on openness in science, as well as whether technology transfer encourages a shift from basic to applied research. By contrast, little has been written concerning the impact technology transfer has on education. This essay addresses this gap by examining the potential that technology transfer has for affecting the curriculum as well as for impacting students directly. The essay concludes with two policy recommendations that have the potential for enhancing educational outcomes and a recommendation for a specific issue for further research. First, universities should consider investing some of the revenues from technology transfer in enhanced and expanded undergraduate education in science and engineering. Second, universities should collect data on job placements in industry. The research issue that is ripe for consideration is the role that peer effects play in graduate education and whether technology transfer alters these effects.     

Academic and Surrogate Entrepreneurs in University Spin-out Companies

Universities have two options when they formulate policies to develop new technology-based start-ups. One approach is to encourage faculty members to engage in this activity. Another avenue is to encourage surrogate (external) entrepreneurs to assume a leadership role. Based on a survey of technology transfer/business development officers at 57 U.K. universities, we examine perceptions regarding the advantages and disadvantages of each approach. We also analyze whether there are significant differences in these attitudes between universities that have launched many start-ups and those that have been less active in this arena. Our results imply that the most significant barriers to the adoption of entrepreneurial-friendly policies are cultural and informational. We also find that universities that generate the most start-ups have more favorable attitudes towards surrogate entrepreneurs. It appears that a combination of academic and surrogate entrepreneurship might be the best approach for universities that wish to develop successful technology-transfer based start-up companies.     

Doing technology transfer in federal laboratories (Part 1)

According to data from the Congressional General Accounting Office and the Association of University Technology Managers, the federal laboratories seriously lag some universities in rates of technology transfer. This paper, based on interviews with technology-transfer professionals in federal laboratories and universities, discusses the phenomenon of technology transfer, highlighting subjects such as technology push and market pull, cooperative R&D, technology licensing, start-up companies, information-dissemination and technology-search programs, technology transfer and local development, models of technology-transfer programs, limits to federal technology transfer, and measurement of technology transfer. It concludes that the explanation for the difference in technology-transfer rates between federal laboratories and universities is due primarily to the way technology-transfer opportunities are marketed in the two sectors.     

A new perspective to explore the technology transfer efficiencies in US universities

Universities play a critical role in the complex technology transfer process that facilitates technology transformation from pure research activities to commercialization. The literature has recently focused on whether universities are efficient in this process. With a two-stage perspective, this study explores the required capabilities for universities to be efficient in technology transfer process. To explore the efficiencies in different stages of technology transfer, we apply a 2-stage process DEA method. The model considers 2 inputs, 2 intermediate variables, and 3 output variables from the Association of University Technology Management database. These variables represent funding resource, patenting activities, and licensing and entrepreneurships. Technology transfer in the 2-stage perspective includes the research innovation stage and the value creation stage. The results show that achieving efficiency in the 2 technology-transfer stages requires many different innovation capabilities; thus, most efficient universities only perform efficiently in one of the two stages. When mapping the relative site of universities in the reference network, we found that efficient universities in the research innovation stage are in a more centralized location than those in the value creation stage. By contrast, in the value creation stage, efficient universities can be identified as different reference groups for specific inefficient universities. The network visualization also helps to explain that universities must consider their relative advantages and capabilities to reach efficiency goals in different stages. The comparison between the large-scale group and the small-scale group also showed that a resource scale is critical for universities to accumulate different required capabilities for efficiencies in both stages.     

University–industry collaboration: using meta-rules to overcome barriers to knowledge transfer

University–industry knowledge transfer is an important source wealth of creation for all partners; however, the practical management of this activity within universities is often hampered by procedural rigidity either through the absence of decision-making protocols to reconcile conflicting priorities or through the inconsistent implementation of existing policies. This is problematic, since it can impede operational effectiveness, prevent inter-organisational knowledge-creation and hamper organisational learning. This paper addresses this issue by adopting a cross-discipline approach and presenting meta-rules as a solution to aid organisational decision making. It is proposed that meta-rules can help resolve tensions arising from conflicting priorities between academics, knowledge transfer offices and industry and help facilitate strategic alignment of processes and policies within and between organisations. This research contributes to the growing debate on the strategic challenges of managing knowledge transfer and presents meta-rules as a practical solution to facilitate strategic alignment of internal and external stakeholder tensions. Meta-rules has previously only been applied in a computer intelligence context however, this research proves the efficacy of meta rules in a university–industry knowledge transfer context. This research also has practical implications for knowledge transfer office managers who can use meta-rules to help overcome resource limitations, conflicting priorities and goals of diverse internal and external stakeholders.

     

Commercializing biomedical science in a rapidly changing “triple-helix” nexus: The experience of the National University of Singapore

Since the late 1990s, the Singapore government had embarked on a significant push to develop the city-state into a major life-science R&D and industrial cluster in Asia. Although a major focus of this new thrust involves attracting leading life science companies overseas to establish operations in Singapore and developing new public life science research institutions to attract overseas life science research talents (Finegold, Wong, and Cheah (2004)), the local universities are expected to play an important role as well. In particular, the National University of Singapore (NUS), the leading university in Singapore, has also started to pursue major strategic change to become more “entrepreneurial”, and identified life science as a major focus for technology commercialization as well. Adapting the “Triple-Helix” framework of Etzkowitz, Webster, Gebhardt, & Terra (2000), this paper examines the significant changes in the university-government-industry “Triple-Helix” nexus for life science in Singapore, and their consequent impact on life science commercialization at NUS. Implications for universities in other late-comer countries seeking to catch up in the global biotech race are discussed.      

New Approaches to Technology Transfer from Publicly Funded Research

The conventional wisdom is that American universities transfer technologies more rapidly and more effectively than their European counterparts. While this appears to be true, it is important to note that there are substantial cultural, legal, and regulatory differences between the two regions, and even within Europe. We believe that European universities can enhance their effectiveness in technology transfer if this function is given more visibility and prestige, enhanced public support, and formal procedures are implemented to facilitate benchmarking. In this paper, we examine some of the differences in university technology transfer in Europe and the U.S., and discuss these new approaches, which have recently been fully supported by the European Commission.     

The Strength of Strong Ties: University Spin-offs and the Significance of Historical Relations

This article investigates the relationship between universities and academic spin-offs, with special emphasis on the antecedent conditions of, and the nature of the linkages that the spin-offs form, as well as the means for sustaining them. The present research uses an instrumental case study approach, and is also an instance of a collective case study as four companies of various size and activities have been studied together. The preliminary results indicate that the network relations are characterized by a small number of strong ties to universities, with a high degree of trust and informality. Although fruitful for the transfer of complex knowledge, the strength of the ties also make them difficult to substitute, which may lead to problems as the spin-offs are highly dependent on continued basic research support. This may in turn lead to implications for policy at university, as well as higher levels.     

Patterns of industry interaction with federal laboratories

This article describes the results of a study of interactions between corporate members of the Industrial Research Institute and federal laboratories. The data were derived from a survey conducted in 1992, building on a similar survey conducted in 1988. The survey addressed questions about the barriers to more frequent and effective interaction, the types of interactions that pay off most for the firm, and the form that payoffs take. Since 1988, federal labs have become a more visible source of external technology and information for large, research-intensive companies, but they still lag considerably behind universities and other companies. The greatest increases in interaction with federal labs have occurred in technology licensing, contract research, and cooperative research, with cooperative research regarded as having the greatest future promise for companies. Perhaps the most significant result of the survey was that companies tend to interact with federal laboratories for reasons that have far more to do with long-term, less tangible payoffs than with expectations of business opportunities or technology commercialization. Both federal policy makers and lab managers should consider incentives to promote types of interactions that have high payoff, especially cooperative research, and initiate the kinds of informal contacts that must occur before downstream commitments are made: professional interactions at the person-to-person level, workshops, and seminars. Additionally, companies and federal labs should clearly acknowledge the high value offered by some of the less tangible payoffs from interaction, and work to develop evidence of these kinds of payoffs that will have as much credibility as the more tangible forms, such as expected profits from new business opportunities.     

A legal perspective on university technology transfer

In the thirty-five years after passage of the Bayh–Dole Act of 1980, a robust literature has documented the emergence of university technology transfer as a critical mechanism for the dissemination and commercialization of new technology stemming from federally-funded research. Missing from these investigations, however, is what this paper terms the legal perspective, an understanding of how the law and its attendant mechanisms impact university technology transfer. Specifically, the paper reviews the extant legal scholarship and provides examples of how case law, legal structures, and the unique nature of intellectual property law affects technology transfer, as well as higher education policy and management. Throughout, we propose critical questions for future investigation, which serve to form a cross-disciplinary research agenda that can contribute fresh insights to scholarly and policy discussions related to the role of universities in economic and social development.     

Corporate Incubators: Industrial R&D and What Universities can Learn from them

The explosive growth of incubation has seen a concurrent and significant increase in research on and knowledge of the incubation phenomenon. However, instead of comprehensively differentiating between non-profit and for-profit incubators, research has described a whole array of partly overlapping archetypes, thus missing out on important aspects. This article first offers two arguments validating a framework of what non-profit university incubators can learn from for-profit corporate incubators before presenting the framework itself. While corporate incubators are for-profit organizations with which to enhance a corporation’s technology development, university incubators try to leverage technological insights from the university in a similar manner. In accordance with their respective missions, organizational structures, incubator processes and resource flows, it is possible to transfer lessons learned from two corporate incubator archetypes—the fast-profit incubator and leveraging incubator—to the world of university incubator. Our empirical findings are based on in-depth case studies of 25 companies through 52 semi-structured interviews with managers of corporate incubators of large technology-intensive corporations in Europe and the U.S., two EU incubator benchmarking surveys and five interviews with the heads of technology transfer offices of two top technology universities.     

Industry-University Cooperative Research Centers

This paper takes a first look at the effect of Industry-University Cooperative Research Centers (IUCRCs) on industrial R&D laboratories. IUCRCs are small academic centers designed to foster technology transfer between universities and firms. Since IUCRCs depend on industry support we expect them to further the research of member companies. Our findings suggest that IUCRCs promote industry-university technology transfer. We find strong associations between laboratory membership in IUCRCs and the importance of faculty consultants, co-authorship with faculty and hiring of graduate students to the laboratories. IUCRC membership contributes small increments, not always statistically significant, of 2% in laboratory patenting and research expenditures. Both estimates are larger for National Science Foundation IUCRCs, consistent with their quality and their sorting to larger laboratories. These results survive a simultaneous equation analysis of the joint decision to patent and join IUCRCs. Nevertheless more work is needed to separate the effect of the IUCRCs from the matching mechanism that assigns IUCRCs to R&D laboratories.     

Technology Transfer: A Contextual Approach

A corporation views effective technology transfer as a necessary element for successful operations. Politicians and Government agencies view technology transfer as critical to a competitive domestic economy. This paper compares and contrasts the technology transfer motives and methods of a corporation and a Government research and technology agency to analyze differences. The analysis reveals that the context, or environment, and the motives of the particular organizational level both reflect the method of technology transfer employed. Motives are not necessarily homogenous across organization levels. Therefore, the successful implementation of technology transfer depends upon creating an environment that will capitalize on the motives that exist at each level, and taking an approach that reflects those motives. The Government approach is to broadcast available technology, whereas that of the corporation is to control its release by targeting recipients. For more effective technology transfer, the Government approach should be augmented by a second stage that considers the individual employee's motivation. Therefore, on the basis of the findings, a two-stage approach to successful Government technology transfer is recommended.     

The university’s unknown knowledge: tacit knowledge, technology transfer and university spin-offs findings from an empirical study based on the theory of knowledge

The assumption that research findings provide the basis for spin-off projects at universities has been found up to now in literature and the practice. Supported by the theory of knowledge, the empirical study presented here shows that this idea is too limited. Only 45 % of spin-offs use codified research findings from the university, while 55 % use tacit knowledge that was acquired at the university. These spin-offs use knowledge beyond research findings, starting companies in the shadow of publications by academic institutions and drawing from the realm of tacit knowledge at universities. Tacit start-up knowledge is present in all scientific disciplines of universities; even the exploitation- and patent-oriented engineering sciences account for almost half of the start-ups. Start-ups based on tacit knowledge lead to both technology-oriented and service companies. They also do not differ from codified knowledge-based start-ups in the number of jobs that they create. The discovery of the tacit knowledge spin-offs as a phenomenon has an entire series of implications for the practice and research. The tacit start-up potential was not considered previously in the university promotion instruments and start-up consultancies. Furthermore, we can assume that tacit knowledge-based start-ups are only an initial indication of the innovation potential within the tacit realm of knowledge for universities and research institutes.     

The Role of Technology in Small Firm Diversification

Sophisticated technologies are finding applications in an ever-growing number of products, from medical devices to children's toys. As high-technology applications proliferate, their use and development is no longer associated only with large companies, universities, and national laboratories. Many small companies compete on the basis of high technology products, processes and materials. While small companies have long been recognized as fertile ground for developing new technologies, little recognition has been given to the important role they play in transferring technologies between industries. This article therefore describes the central role that technology played in the diversification efforts of nine New England defense contractors. One of the study';s key findings is that successful firms relied upon their existing technical and management capabilities to obtain a sustainable competitive advantage in their new civilian markets. The article also describes a number of other factors that contributed to the success of their diversification efforts.     

Relationship Dynamics between University Research Centers and Industrial Firms: Their Impact on Technology Transfer Activities

In this study we focus on relationship-oriented factors such as trust, geographic proximity, communication, and university policies for intellectual property rights (IPR), patents and licenses and examine how these factors influence the technology transfer process between university research centers and their industrial partners. Data for this study were collected from 189 industrial firms working with 21 research centers affiliated with prominent research-oriented universities in the US. Our results showed that trust, geographic proximity, and flexible university policies for IPR, patents, and licenses were strongly associated with greater technology transfer activities. The implications for both researchers and practitioners are discussed.     

Determinant factors of university spin-off: the case of Korea

Increasingly more research has examined the creation of university spin-off firms as are seen as an important source of regional and national economic growth. However little is known about the factors influencing the formation of university spin-off in Asian countries, especially in Korea. This paper contributes to the literature on academic entrepreneurship by deepening our understanding on determinant factors of university spin-off in the case of Korea. We investigate organizational and institutional factors highlighted in the literature as influencing the creation of university spin-off companies. The Korean government has implemented the INNOPOLIS Research Institute Spin-off (IRIS) program to enable universities to create new firms within special research and development (R&D) zones to commercialize public R&D output. The capability of universities to establish new firms through the program varies; consequently, this study utilized 122 universities from 2013 to 2015 to analyze determinant factors that affect university spin-offs. Panel logit and negative binomial analysis results indicate that university location has the highest positive influence on IRIS. Government-sponsored funding has a negative impact; however, the likelihood that universities create spin-offs and the number of IRIS firms are positively and significantly affected by publications, patents, research funding, and number of university spin-offs.     

Optimizing federal technology transfer to promote commercialization

Federal technology transfer programs have two primary purposes: (1) to transfer technology (including knowledge, know-how, and ideas, as well as hardware) to companies to strengthen the companies’ commercialization of products and (2) to transfer technology to a federal agency from another federal agency or the private sector so the agency can execute its congressionally designated mission more efficiently and at reduced cost to the taxpayer. In the selection of technology transfer projects for funding, agencies often require that both purposes be satisfied. This study emphasizes the principles of technology transfer to strengthen companies’ commercialization practices.     

Technology proximity between firms and universities and technology transfer

This paper investigates the technological orientation of firms and universities and their propensity to have knowledge and technology transfer (KTT) activities. This study looks at the technological potential for KTT and how it is used, emphasizing differences between smaller and larger firms. To this end we collected information about the technology activities of firms (patent statistics) and the technology activities of universities. Furthermore, we used survey data on technology transfer activities. We combined the three datasets and found??especially for smaller firms??that great technology proximity fosters transfer activities with different universities (case 1). The same is true if proximity is low and expertise is considerable at universities in the respective technology field (case 2). In both cases additional transfer potential exists. In the second case firms engage in transfer activities in order to update and modify their knowledge base and as a consequence improve ??competitiveness?? in certain technology fields. Furthermore, firms show a tendency to diversify their contacts with universities in order to avoid knowledge lock-in.