Evaluation methods and practices used by university technology transfer offices

Knowledge and technology transfer practices between universities and industry involves the evaluation, protection and marketing of research and development outcomes with the aim of translating invention into innovation that can benefit a wide scope of stakeholders, including the researchers and the university. The main objective and contribution of this paper is to provide evidence on what technology evaluation practices and methods are most in use by Technology Transfer Offices (TTOs). Qualitative and quantitative data was collected through extensive interviews to eight Portuguese Public University TTOs. Based on the collected data it was possible to perform statistical tests using One-sample T-tests for the means of relevant variables, which allowed to identify the most common technology evaluation practices and methods and instruments of evaluation. The research was essentially exploratory and descriptive, but it provided the basis to further research that may have a more analytical nature, such as understanding the importance of these practices in terms of TTO’s performance. The research identified in a thorough manner the most important approaches and techniques for technology evaluation used by TTO’s, an issue that the literature usually treats in a rather fragmented way. Checklists, scoring and predefined evaluation models are the most used methods among the TTOs, ensuring a quick assessment of the technical and market value of research results. Previous agreements and discounted cash-flow projections are mainly used when a spinoff firm is under consideration or when the TTOs receive an investor manifestation of interest. Royalty standards are used to prepare licence negotiations. Invention comparison analysis is used especially when considering incremental technical solutions.This work has been supported by FCT -Fundacao para a Ciencia e Tecnologia within the R&D Units Project Scope: UIDB/00319/2020