The outcomes of individual-level technology transfer and the role of research collaboration networks

This paper discusses the outcomes of university-industry interaction from the perspective of an individual academic researcher. Two contributions are made to the extant literature. First, in the existing research, the focus has mostly been on outcomes such as university-based patenting, licensing revenues, invention disclosures to technology transfer offices, and academic entrepreneurship. This narrow focus has excluded intangible outcomes, such as the identification of new research ideas and commercial opportunities, from the discussion. Therefore, in this paper, both intangible and tangible outcomes are taken into account, and the empirical analysis identifies unique individual-level factors related to the different types of outcomes. Second, in the extant literature, it is argued that a boundary-spanning position within different types of networks is related to higher performance and the identification of unique ideas. This aspect is analysed by identifying the role of a boundary-spanning position in research collaboration networks with respect to the different outcomes. The empirical results show that the different outcomes are clearly related to different individual-level factors, and that a boundary-spanning position in research collaboration networks is related to both intangible and tangible outcomes.