Exploring the relationship between university innovation intermediaries and patenting performance

This paper investigates the role of university intermediary organisations in entrepreneurially orientated universities, in terms of their patent performance based on a large-scale survey of such organisations in Turkey. The findings from 1236 responses indicate that intermediary organisations, regardless of their type, are crucial in increasing the patenting performance of universities, although this also had a regional dimension. The research also charts the organisational evolution of university innovation intermediaries in Turkey suggesting that the success of organisational forms in promoting industry-academic links and university research commercialisation will vary according to the wider institutional and socio-economic frameworks of the national and regional systems of innovation in which the universities are posited. •1236 universities staff responses from Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEMs) subjects were included due to their areas of interests and likelihood for patent applications were used, representing 42% of the total sample.•Patent application is positively correlated with the Technology Transfer Office, Interface Organisation, Patent Office, IPR Policy and the level of economic development of a region. However registered patent is correlated only with Interface Organisation, Technology Licencing Office and the level of economic development of a region.•All regression results demonstrate that the model is very strong (percentages = />80%) and have a pseudo R2 of 0.14 and 0.10 respectively, which confirms the adequacy of the models.•Universities that have Patent Offices are 2.06 times more likely to have patent applications than universities that do not have Patent Offices.