Knowledge and Technology Transfer Support Potential of Intermediate Organizations

This chapter aims at analyzing and optimizing the requirements of the internal environment regarding university-business cooperation (UBC). It focuses on university Technology Transfer Offices (TTOs), intermediate organizations embedded within the university environment. They support knowledge and technology transfer (KTT) activities, particularly the commercialization of research-based products. TTOs are supposed to accelerate and facilitate KTT from science into business practice. Although literature on university research commercialization highlights the relevance of transfer support by TTOs, empirical studies and KTT practice show that TTO services are used rather sparsely. Based on theoretical considerations and results of recent empirical studies on KTT, this chapter discusses two practice cases to derive indicators for a better exploitation of unused KTT support potential of TTOs. The results show that personal engagement aimed at a marketing service provider philosophy emerges as the key factor for fostering and intensifying cooperation between researchers and TTOs.

A Conceptual Framework of the Relationship between Institutional Framing and Innovativeness

This chapter's objective is to analyze the institutional networks of the spin-off companies. To meet this objective cases of three universities are being evaluated and compared. The comparison of cases from the USA, Denmark and South Korea suggests that the institutional network has a significant impact on the development of the spin-off company. The role of different agents (for example universities) change with time during different stages of the development of the spin-off. The study suggests that there are certain similarities between different institutional networks, including the dependence on context, importance of intermediaries and similar roles of the institutions within the networks.

Academic Entrepreneurship in Emerging Economy Context

Entrepreneurship fosters economic development of a country. This appears more crucial and absolute necessity in emerging country context. The efforts have been laid for entrepreneurship development with the collaboration of academic institutions and industries. These collaborations try to transform academic based research into commercialized products to develop a knowledge based society. Government has also initiated numerous projects to support this effort. This chapter presents an overview of the whole scenario along with its challenges, prospects and future development in emerging country context. The theme has been elaborated with a case study on IIT Kharagpur, India.

An Effective Model for University-Industry Research Collaboration

This chapter describes the Maryland Industrial Partnerships (MIPS) program, its genesis, operations, record, and impact. Founded in 1987, MIPS provides funding, matched by participating companies, for university-based research projects that help Maryland companies develop new products. Startup companies find the program attractive in leveraging their scarce resources in a non-dilutive, non-debt manner and effective in enlisting expert faculty and students in developing their company products. The State of Maryland finds the MIPS program attractive because of its significant economic impact and its high-multiple return of tax dollars to the State. The University System of Maryland faculty have embraced the program for the industry collaborations created and research funding provided. The effectiveness of the MIPS program is greatly enhanced by Maryland's robust innovation and entrepreneurship ecosystem built up over decades, a build-up whose acceleration coincided with the 1983 creation of MIPS' parent organization, now known as the Maryland Technology Enterprise Institute.

The Commercialisation and Adoption of Emerging Technologies

Professional Service Firms (PSFs) are organisations that may support technology firms and play a role in taking new or emerging technologies through the commercialisation process including developing competitive strategies and facilitating the business development activities. The focus of this chapter is how PSFs influence the commercialisation and adoption of new or emerging technologies which is examined through three case studies: Telemedicine; Wearable Technology and Mobile Services. They can either assist vendors through the commercialisation activities directly or indirectly by aiding with networking aspects. Further, PSFs may facilitate knowledge transfer from specialised research centres (either university or commercial centres) or spin-off firms (from established technology companies).

Lean Startup for Academic Entrepreneurship

This chapter describes how the Lean Startup approach has been applied at the George Washington University to enhance the technology transfer function. The nascent Lean Startup approach, as embodied in the National Science Foundation's Innovation Corps (NSF I-CorpsTM) program, presents an exciting new platform for universities and their Technology Transfer Offices (TTOs) to build scalable launchpads for research-based startup efforts. Traditional university technology transfer techniques have yielded mixed results in commercializing inventions of their researchers. The NSF I-CorpsTM program is fostering a new generation of researchers who can better understand and bridge the gap between lab and market. It provides an intensive boot camp that guides researchers through an interview-based customer development process to determine whether there is an appropriate product market fit for their inventions. These Lean Startup-savvy researchers are better able to work with their TTOs, entrepreneurs, and industry to improve the prospects for startup success. Their future research initiatives also benefit from being informed about what commercially relevant problems exist in their areas of expertise.

The Crowdsourcing Scheme as an Innovative Management Tool in University Spin-Offs

Crowdsourcing is an emerging technique adopted by companies in the process of innovation. It can be also adopted by university spin-offs that play the significant role in the process of knowledge and technology transfer. In recent years, they have been researched from diverse perspectives. However, there are hardly any studies based on university spin-offs that have implemented crowdsourcing. This chapter presents how crowdsourcing business model might be applied to develop a university spin-off. The paper explains the rationale behind the adaptation of crowdsourcing by innovation-driven spin-offs. One overarching question of the chapter is “Can crowdsourcing be well adopted by university spin-offs?” Our study will open new paths for research and discussion, and its results will be supportive for decision making in the context of innovation and entrepreneurship. The logic of this paper is to speculate how university spin-offs can create value with the groups of online users through adopting crowdsourcing in its operation.

COTEC's Technology Commercialization Accelerator (Act®)

This chapter describes, from a practitioner's perspective, COTEC's Technology Commercialization Accelerator (Act®) - a nationwide venture engine that aims at creating social and economic value from the knowledge generated by researchers, by supporting them in the creation of high-tech / high-growth ventures. To contextualize the environment in which Act® was created and operates, a set of statistical data that is relevant to characterize the Portuguese knowledge creation and deployment landscape is provided early in the chapter. Then, the different stages of the unique technology valorisation process employed by Act® are detailed. The main figures regarding Act's achievements, since it was created in 2004, will then be provided, together with a short description of some of the start-ups created with Act® support. Finally, the lessons learned throughout Act's development and an overview of the challenges that will frame its future development are provided.

A Lab-to-Market Ecosystem in an Academic Environment

This chapter will examine the challenges and opportunities confronted in the commercialization of research-based technologies in a university setting. Particular focus will be brought to the identification and creation of a university-based entrepreneurial ecosystem and ways of sustaining it. To provide more detailed context, the authors will cite specific programs and outcomes from these programs, resources and strategies currently utilized and embodied by the Maryland Technology Enterprise Institute, Mtech, at the University of Maryland, College Park (UMD). Particular challenges and obstacles will be discussed including intellectual property issues, conflicts of commitment, and conflicts of interest. Finally, as a way of assisting others in creating a university-based entrepreneurial ecosystem, guidance will be given as to the resources necessary to create and sustain it.

Active and Passive Resistance to Organizational Change

Today, almost all organizations (private or public, small, medium or large in size etc.) need to change. However, organizational change efforts are not always successful for various reasons. Active and passive resistance to organizational change is one of these. In this chapter, efforts to form an entrepreneurship minor program in a public university and some reasons for active and passive resistance to it are examined. For this examination, data was mainly collected from one-to-one and semi-structured interviews which were mostly conducted with the vice deans of various faculties and from the participative observation of one of the researchers. In addition, some documents about the program were examined.