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Transferring Knowledge to Improve University Competitiveness: The Performance of Technology Transfer Offices

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Governance and Performance Management in Public Universities

Part of the book series: SIDREA Series in Accounting and Business Administration ((SSABA))

Abstract

Creating and transferring knowledge is actually considered crucial for universities to improve their competitiveness in a new mission to flank teaching and research (third mission). A key concept within the “third mission” is the idea that universities should pay greater attention to knowledge transfer (KT), under the assumption that an efficient KT process from university to industry can be an important source of innovation for firms, a competitive advantage for universities and an engine of economic development for regions. Universities carry out KT activities mainly through their technology transfer offices (TTOs), but the literature findings on the TTO’s role are controversial. Our research contributes to this lively debate, focusing on the efficiency of the Liaison Office (LiO), the TTO in the University of Calabria, measured in terms of research outputs (namely patents, licenses, and spin-off contracts). In the research, we used the qualitative tools of document analysis and semi-structured interviews with university managers involved with KT activities. The findings of the research highlight that LiO plays an important role for the University of Calabria's competitiveness in the third mission, as it effectively valorizes the university research results, mainly helping university spin-offs (USOs) in their start-up and development phases.

All authors wrote the chapter, but their primary individual contributions are reflected as follows: Section 1 is to be ascribed to Franco Rubino, Sections 2 and 3 are to be ascribed to Pina Puntillo, Sections 4, 5, and 6 are to be ascribed to Stefania Veltri.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    There are several measures used by studies focused on measuring the TTO performance, and the majority of them based their measures on the income generated by knowledge transfer commercialization. Other studies measured outputs in terms of contributions via the labor force (Bessette, 2003; Chrisman et al., 1995; Elliott et al., 1988), revenues obtained from patents, R&D collaborations (Siegel et al., 2003), spillover effects (Audretsch & Lehmann, 2005), or total university earnings (Goldstein, 1990). A few studies related the economic impact of TTOs to the change in the gross domestic product (Martin, 1998; Roessner et al., 2013; Guerrero et al., 2015).

  2. 2.

    Explorative case studies are carried out to acquire useful indications in an area not (or partially not) explored and their findings constitute just preliminary interpretations of a phenomenon. The theoretical paradigm underlying our research is the interpretive model. In the light of interpretivism, sociological phenomena cannot simply be observed, but must also be interpreted by the researcher (Ryan et al., 2002).

  3. 3.

    In Italy, research, teaching and third mission activities, supported by administrative activities, are delivered by state (public) and non-state universities approved by the national Ministry of Education (Siboni et al., 2013). The public universities are almost equally distributed in Northern, Central and Southern Italy (36%, 29% and 35%, respectively), while most are medium- and small-sized (42% and 39% respectively) (Mazzotta et al., 2020).

  4. 4.

    The data reported in the Section derive from the interview to the head of LiO and a brief presentation provided by the head of LiO and are updated to 20 May 2020.

  5. 5.

    Start Cup Calabria is a business competition among high technological value ideas which are willing to make innovative enterprises. It is part of the National Award on Innovation and, since 2009, 750 ideas evaluated and over 30 enterprises started. UniCalab are contamination labs in which students of different disciplines attend a one-year experience aimed at learning how to turn their innovative ideas into enterprises. The program consists of four phases (scouting, academy, pre-acceleration & competition, acceleration) and achieved results in terms of students involved (around 100), teams activated (10), awards (3), companies per year (2).

  6. 6.

    Netval is the Italian University Network for the Valorization of Research (see http://www.netval.it), which annually, for 16 years, has carried out a survey on the valorization of the research results addressed to universities’ technology transfer offices and research centers.

  7. 7.

    Mimicking the well-known separation in university between academic and administrative workers, the head of the LiO belongs to the administrative workers, while the delegates to the technological transfer are appointed by the Rector and are selected among full professors of the university.

  8. 8.

    The authors also identified a residual fourth category made of universities that are scarcely involved in KT, or engaged in KT activity too recently to generate significant outcomes (Cesaroni & Piccaluga, 2016). In their research, universities were so distributed: the 20% belonged to cluster 1; 24.3% to cluster 3 and 34.3% to cluster 2.

  9. 9.

    The fourteenth (fifteenth) edition of the Netval survey report, published in 2018 (2019), refers to data about 2016 (2017) from 62 (60) Italian universities, accounting for 75.5% (62.5%) of the total number of students and 85.7% (84.4%) of the total number of professors. It should be underlined that the answers to the Netval survey have been processed only for the public universities (excluding telematics universities, universities for foreigners and Public Research Centers). Universities did not answer all the questions, thus the number of slight changes for each question answered. The questionnaire provides input measures, information on TTOs organization and output measures, on which we focus.

  10. 10.

    Patents are the main voice of the IP rights, which also includes utility models (3), trademarks (3) and software (1).

  11. 11.

    On this issue, we asked the head of LiO, who told us that the datum should be completed with the five patent applications in 2017, which hopefully will become patents granted in the near future. Anyway, from the 6 patents licensed (1 in 2017, 2 in 2016), Unical does not earn a great amount of money (from the interview with the head of LiO).

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Business Administration and Law, University of Calabria, Arcavacata di Rende, CS, Italy

    Pina Puntillo, Franco Rubino & Stefania Veltri

Authors
  1. Pina Puntillo
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  2. Franco Rubino
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  3. Stefania Veltri
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Pina Puntillo .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Economics Marco Biagi, Modena and Reggio Emilia University, Modena, Italy

    Eugenio Caperchione

  2. Department of Political Sciences and International Relations, University of Palermo, Palermo, Italy

    Carmine Bianchi

Appendix: Guiding Interview Questions

Appendix: Guiding Interview Questions

For the current head of LiO

  1. 1.

    How specialized is the LiO staff?

  2. 2.

    How much are the revenues from the knowledge transfer in the Unical consolidated report?

  3. 3.

    How many patents are there in the LiO portfolio?

  4. 4.

    Are the employees of the Technology Transfer Offices specialized?

  5. 5.

    Do LiO relationships with the Spin-off go beyond the creation phase?

  6. 6.

    Could academic researchers participate in a spin-off?

  7. 7.

    Could academic researchers ask for a sabbatical year to work in the spin-off they contribute to create?

  8. 8.

    Is the academic researchers’ involvement in the knowledge transfer activities taken into consideration for academic progression?

  9. 9.

    Which incentives are used to stimulate the academic researchers’ participation in knowledge transfer activities?

  10. 10.

    Are academic researchers financially (or through more academic funds) rewarded if they generate earnings from the applied research beyond an established level?

  11. 11.

    Are academic researchers financially (or through more academic funds) rewarded if they contribute to create university spin-offs.

  12. 12.

    How is the percentage of the LiO’s self-financing? And which sources contribute more? (research projects, services to spin-off firms, patents, and so on).

  13. 13.

    Does the LiO (or the academic researcher) involve all the areas in the university potentially useful (law areas, business areas and so on), or is there a search from external consultants?

For the current and former University of Calabria delegates to technology transfer

  1. 14.

    Is the third mission in terms of knowledge transfer included within the university mission?

  2. 15.

    Does the university promote training courses and programs to support entrepreneurship?

  3. 16.

    Has the university a specific strategy for technology transfer?

  4. 17.

    Does the university offer services to support the spin-off creation involving external people such as legal or marketing consultants?

  5. 18.

    Which services does the university make available to researchers to favor the academic spin-off creation, to business plan activities, to patenting process, to licensing activities, to find external funds?

  6. 19.

    Is the definition of a knowledge transfer strategy a main objective of the university? Is a knowledge transfer strategy included in the University Strategic Plan?

  7. 20.

    How important are the networking activities (i.e., agreements with other universities, shared guiding lines, shared patents, interactions with local firms, regional/national/international centers for innovation and knowledge transfer?

  8. 21.

    Has the university dedicated a specific budget to the LiO?

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Puntillo, P., Rubino, F., Veltri, S. (2022). Transferring Knowledge to Improve University Competitiveness: The Performance of Technology Transfer Offices. In: Caperchione, E., Bianchi, C. (eds) Governance and Performance Management in Public Universities. SIDREA Series in Accounting and Business Administration. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-85698-4_7

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