Indicators of university–industry knowledge transfer performance and their implication for universities: evidence from the United Kingdom

The issue of what indicators are most appropriate in order to measure the performance of universities in knowledge transfer (KT) activities remains relatively under-investigated. The main aim of this paper is to identify and discuss the limitations to the current measurements of university-industry KT performance, and propose some directions for improvement. We argue that university-industry KT can unfold in many ways and impact many stakeholders, and that, especially in highly differentiated university systems, choosing indicators focused on a narrow range of activities and impacts might limit the ability of universities to accurately represent their KT performance. Therefore, KT indicators should include a variety of activities and reflect a variety of impacts, so as to allow comparability between different institutions and avoid the creation of undesirable behavioural incentives. To illustrate these issues empirically, we discuss the case of the United Kingdom’s Higher Education –Business and Community Interaction (HE-BCI) survey

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

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

Participation and commitment in third-party research funding: evidence from Italian Universities

The paper examines data on third party research of Italian departments and develops a two stage model in which the first stage examines the binary decision to engage into third party research, the second the intensity of third party research as a share of department research budget