Research On The Modes And Motivation Factors Of University Technology Transfer

Nowadays, the economic development of the whole society is based on knowledge and its innovation, and motivated by industry’s abilities to research and develop new products and new arts. In this situation, the technology transfer between universities and industries sets up a connection. As a result, the two sectors can communicate scientific and technologic knowledge and information more thoroughly and the edging high-tech could be applied through industrial use more efficiently. Creating and spreading knowledge is the basic mission of universities. The main goals for technology transfer precisely are to reinforce the functions of universities and other research institutions to accomplish their basic mission, as well to make sure that initial research fruits could be applied and further developed for public welfare.In this dissertation, we firstly discuss the several specific modes of technology transfer mechanism in universities in the United States and China, summarize the characteristics, and analyze the similarities and differences between both countries’ universities. In the United States, now edging high-tech research results and inventions can transfer smoothly between universities and industry via their effective collaborations. Consequently, new knowledge and technology can be applied and commercialized through industry efficiently, which provides a sustainable scientific and technical support to make the American society and its economics keep prospering and growing. In this dissertation, we will analyze four different main modes of universities technology transfer systems in the United States, including the sponsored research mode, the technology licensing mode, the technology consulting mode, and the technology start-up companies’mode. We will emphasize on certain technology transfer agreements and the relevant practice in real world. The interests conflicts resulted from the technology transfer process will also be discussed in this dissertation. Compared to our counterparts in the United States, universities technology transfer in China started relatively late, though it is developing very quickly recently. In our discussion on the technology transfer systems in China, we also analyze four main modes, such as the traditional technology purchasing mode, the technology incubators mode, the technology transfer intermediary platform mode, and the technology venture mode, and emphasize the pros and cons of each mode.Secondly, in this dissertation, we will mathematically model the motivation mechanism of university-industry collaboration and evaluate the effects of some main factors which might determine the motivation of technology transfer. We believe that some most important factors include but not limit to benefit distribution, sophistication of the technology, the marketability and market positioning of the technology, the obstruction during technology transfer. Then we model the influences of those factors separately and present a quantitative method to evaluate the whole motivation mechanism of technology transfer happened between universities and industry. Based on the proposed model, we discuss the similarities and differences between the United States and China in the motivation mechanisms of technology transfer. Hopefully it could benefit the public section’s policy making processes and the negotiations or contract making between universities and industry.Benefit distribution is one important factor that affects the performance of university technology transfer. A proper and reasonable method to distribute the benefits between universities and industry is vital to determine the successfulness of the whole technology transfer project. In the final part of this dissertation, we present a method to use frontier production function to evaluate the collaboration between universities and industry. Based on this production function, we also present a mathematical programming model to determine each parameter of various factors which may affect the result of benefit distribution. In this dissertation, we propose a method to use the optimization model of decision-making theory to detemiine the parameters in our benefit distribution model. This method is a kind of quantitative analysis tool, which can be used to improve the effectiveness and productiveness of technology transfer collaboration between universities and industry.