| In recent years, universities have increasingly pursued a commercialization agenda manifested in the rapid escalation of technology transfer, the process by which university research is transformed into marketable products. Stimulated by changed external expectations for economic development and internal pressures to generate new sources of revenue, many universities are becoming increasingly entrepreneurial by actively seeking to license technologies to business and industry and, in some cases, to establish their own start-up companies as a vehicle for commercialization. However, the allure of enormous financial gain that few institutions have enjoyed appears to be unchecked by a dearth of research on the university technology transfer phenomenon. This study seeks to fill this research gap by investigating the effects of particular resource factors on three measures of technology transfer performance, the formation of start-up companies, the number of IPO companies to whom a university had licensed a technology, and the level of licensing income received.; Utilizing multi-source archival data from a sample of 108 universities and conceptual and theoretical lenses from the strategy, organizational theory, entrepreneurship, and higher education literatures, a subset of internal university and external environment resource factors were identified as possible sources of variation among the three performance measures. The results indicated that the variable set accounted for between 45 and 62 per cent of the differential performance depending on what measure of performance is used.; Federal and industry R&D revenues, an institution's private or public status, the number of licenses with equity, and the technology transfer office size were positive predictors of one or more of the measures of performance. However, a state's venture capital munificence and state appropriation for higher education were significant predictors of particular measures of performance but in the negative direction as was the presence of a medical school, engineering school, and business incubator. These findings provide reaffirming support of previous research and practice in specific areas while challenging conventional thinking in others. Practitioners, public policy makers, and business and industry are advised as to how they might use these results from their stakeholder perspective as are researchers considering future inquiry in this fertile territory. |
