Abstract:

Successful technology transfer is often linked to the performance of technology transfer offices (TTOs) within universities and research institutions in general. Although a number of tools have been proposed to improve the performance of TTOs, scarce literature concentrates on an overall approach that takes into account the whole set of dimensions impacting on performance. Drawing from literature on strategy and business development of SMEs, we reviewed the extant contributions where such critical success factors have been identified and assumed TTOs could be considered as small firms struggling to become competitive. Based on evidence from literature, we eventually propose a holistic tool to measure and improve the performance of TTOs.