Is the alignment between public research organisations' R&D competence and policies really critical for technology transfer?

Abstract This study examines the effects of commercially-oriented research and development (R&D) competence and technology commercialisation (TC) policies in public research organisations (PROs) on R&D efficiency of companies when they receive technology transfer from PROs. This study especially uses three-stage data envelopment analysis in order to control the companies’ absorptive capacity and innovation hurdles that affect the efficiency. The results show that companies that receive technology transfer from PROs that have good alignment between commercially-oriented R&D competence and TC policies have higher R&D efficiency than companies that do not. On the other hand, the misalignment between PROs’ commercially-oriented R&D competence and TC policies can have negative effects on R&D efficiency of companies that receive technology transfer. Consequently, this study discloses that the alignment between technology transferor's commercially-oriented R&D competence and TC policies is critical for improving the R&D efficiency of companies when the companies acquire technologies from external organisations.