Productive commercialization of university technology

Productive commercialization of university technology is a concern for the many stakeholders of the commercialization system. Do more total university research expenditures and more university office of technology commercialization (OTC) staffing result in greater license income? What are the recent trends of selected OTC outputs? Furthermore, are there productivity differences among some university sub-groups? These are questions shared by stakeholders of the university technology commercialization system and questions that are addressed in this study. This quantitative analysis was conducted with data collected from the Statistics Access for Tech Transfer (STATT) database maintained by the Association of University Technology Managers (AUTM). The sample size consisted of 203 universities during the ten-year period with a minimum of 79 universities reporting for each of the ten years, 2001 through 2010. Universities in STATT comprise approximately 85% of the total annual university research expenditures in the United States. The nonparametric analysis utilized to test hypotheses of the research found significant differences among certain university sub-groups. The sub-groups of universities selected were: public, private, land grant, non-land grant, without medical schools, and with medical schools integrated in a single OTC system.
The body of knowledge for the productive commercialization of university technology environment was updated and expanded by this research with the most recent commercialization data available. The research concluded that significant correlation between higher levels of university research expenditures and higher licensing income, and significant correlation between higher staffing levels in the university OTC and higher licensing income. In addition, the existence of significant differences among selected university sub-groups was identified in the productive commercialization of university technology.