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Are researchers deliberately bypassing the technology transfer office? An analysis of TTO awareness

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Abstract

Most universities committed to the commercialization of academic research have established technology transfer offices (TTOs). Nonetheless, many researchers bypass these TTOs and take their inventions directly to the marketplace. While TTO bypassing has typically been portrayed as deliberate and undesirable behavior, we argue that it could be unintentional as many researchers may simply be unaware of the TTO’s existence. Taking an information-processing perspective and using data on 3250 researchers in 24 European universities, we examine researcher attributes associated with TTO awareness. Our evidence confirms that only a minority of researchers are aware of the existence of a TTO at their university. TTO awareness is greater among researchers who possess experience as entrepreneurs, closed many research and consulting contracts with industry partners, conduct research in medicine, engineering or life sciences, or occupy postdoctoral positions. Policy implications of these findings are discussed.

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Notes

  1. It is worth acknowledging that, while we identified the individual attributes building upon information-processing arguments, prior research on academic entrepreneurship has also generally accepted these attributes as important human and social capital dimensions (e.g., Ambos et al. 2008; Mosey and Wright 2007; Powers and McDougall 2005; Toole and Czarnitzki 2010).

  2. Information on the universities included length and structure of the interviews, and data collected during the interviews can be obtained from the authors upon request.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Australian Centre for Entrepreneurship Research, Queensland University of Technology, 2 George Street, GPO Box 2434, Brisbane, QLD, 4001, Australia

    Annelore Huyghe

  2. Ghent University, Tweekerkenstraat 2, 9000, Ghent, Belgium

    Mirjam Knockaert & Mike Wright

  3. University of Oslo, Oslo, Norway

    Mirjam Knockaert

  4. Department of Management, Economics and Industrial Engineering, Politecnico di Milano, Piazza Leonardo da Vinci 32, 20133, Milan, Italy

    Evila Piva

  5. Imperial College Business School, 46 Exhibition Road, London, SW7 2AZ, UK

    Mike Wright

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  1. Annelore Huyghe
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Correspondence to Annelore Huyghe.

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Huyghe, A., Knockaert, M., Piva, E. et al. Are researchers deliberately bypassing the technology transfer office? An analysis of TTO awareness. Small Bus Econ 47, 589–607 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11187-016-9757-2

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