Generating science-based growth: an econometric analysis of the impact of organizational incentives on university-industry technology transfer

In recent years, there has been a rapid rise in commercial knowledge transfers from universities to practitioners or university/industry technology transfer (UITT), via licensing agreements, research joint ventures, and startups. In a previous study in 1999, the authors outlined a production function model to assess the relative efficiency of UITT and conducted field research to identify several organizational factors that could enhance the effectiveness of university management of intellectual property portfolios. This paper extends this framework and evaluates the impact of organizational incentives on the effectiveness of UITT. It is found that universities having more attractive incentive structures for UITT, i.e. those that allocate a higher %age of royalty payments to faculty members, tend to be more efficient in technology transfer activities. University administrators who wish to foster UITT should be mindful of the importance of financial incentives.