Successful Tech Transfer = Market Commercialization

Abstract:     
Our interest in writing this article is to create a bridge between the scholarly and academic research on technological innovation and a private sector, for-profit business model that implements the ideas on innovation and entrepreneurship, primarily in metro regional economies.

In this article, we explain why the conventional wisdom about university tech transfer is misleading. We cite the recent work of Brett Frischmann, who explores how university science and technology research systems perform economically as infrastructural capital, and explains how these university tech transfer systems generate social and economic value when the technology is "commercialized."

We provide some evidence from other research that describes why tech transfer aimed at promoting regional economic development requires technological diversity in the industrial value chains.

We conclude that one essential component of a diverse technological infrastructure that supports successful tech transfer is a regional private capital market mechanism that targets investment capital to regional new ventures.

Number of Pages in PDF File: 7

Keywords: private capital market infrastructure, university tech transfer, multinational corporation, small manufacturing enterprise, entrepreneur, industrial value chains, innovation, economic development, technology investments

JEL Classification: L16, M13, O31, O32, O33, O34, O38, R15, R58

working papers series