Assessing the productivity of technology transfer offices: an analysis of the relevance of aspiration performance and portfolio complexity

Esteban Lafuente and Jasmina Berbegal-Mirabent

The Journal of Technology Transfer, 2019, vol. 44, issue 3, No 6, 778-801

Abstract: Abstract The paper investigates the productivity level of technology transfer offices (TTOs) affiliated to Spanish public universities. The proposed approach allows the development of a framework that matches universities’ technology transfer concerns with the need to accurately analyze the role of the outcome configuration of TTOs. We analyze the productivity of Spanish TTOs during 2006–2011 by computing total factor productivity models rooted in non-parametric techniques, namely the Malmquist index. The results confirm that technology transfer productivity is affected by changes in the configuration of the TTO’s outcome portfolio that result from benchmarking own and market peers’ performance levels. While benchmarking own performance levels facilitates the exploitation of internal resources and yields superior productivity results, changes in TTO’s portfolio based on comparisons with market peers might generate greater operational costs that negatively impact productivity.

Keywords: Technology transfer; Technology transfer office; Universities; Total factor productivity; Data envelopment analysis; Aspiration performance (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I23 J48 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2019
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (21)

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DOI: 10.1007/s10961-017-9604-x

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