Chapter 5 Bringing Technology Projects to Market: Balancing of Efficiency and Collaboration

Commercialization of research projects at the university, in particular, its efficiency and performance, have attracted little attention in the empirical literature to date. This despite the fact that commercialization of university knowledge is increasingly seen as a third task of universities and understanding of what enhances and what blocks the processes involved, is virtually lacking, particularly on the project level. The purpose of this chapter is therefore to identify factors that influence the performance of university-driven knowledge projects, including efficiency, in the context of commercialization of knowledge at universities. In this context, the study employs Data Envelop Analysis combined with Rough-Set Analysis on a sample of 42 projects in the Netherlands. The major factors influencing overall performance in commercialization turn out to be years of collaboration with large firms and efficiency in use of resources in the projects, but the affinity of the project managers at university with the market also plays a role. The best overall results in commercialization (introduction to market in a relatively short time) are gained with a longer period of collaboration with large firms (5–10 years) and a medium level of efficiency. There are also some contradictory trends. The chapter concludes with implications of the results, as well as some future research paths.