Technology transfer has an important role to play in today’s world, where access to
know-how and knowledge are valuable. The technology transfer offices (TTOs)
facilitate commercial knowledge transfers through the licensing to industry of
inventions or other forms of intellectual property resulting from university research.
These offices also conduct activities of supporting spin-offs, negotiating industry
sponsored research agreements and consulting. There are various variables affecting
the performance of TTO. It is important to identify and analyze the relationships
among these variables.
In this study, we proposed FCM as a modeling tool and simulation technique for
analyzing the causal relations among the factors influencing the TTO performance.
According to the findings, TTO performance is mainly influenced by economic
uncertainty, industry research demand, R&D budget of university and TTO human
resources capacity. The preceding two of these factors are defined as external and the
latter two factors are identified as internal variables. When we analyze the TTO
performance measures, number of patents awarded, license income, number of
established spin-offs, consulting income and contractual research income are
influenced at the similar degree by the external factors. However, the influence of
internal factors on number of patents awarded, license income, number of established
spin-offs is higher in comparison to consulting income and contractual research
income. Since the internal factors are controllable for TTOs, it could be concluded that
TTO managers should focus on three performance measures; number of patents
awarded, license income, number of established spin-offs which are affected mostly by
the internal factors.
In future work, we will develop a risk based cost-benefit model for technology
transfer offices considering the direct and indirect relations among the factors affecting
the TTO performance