Toward successful commercialization of university technology: Performance drivers of university technology transfer in Taiwan

The transfer of university technology22This study adopts the definition of university technology transfer suggested by Siegel et al. (2003).to industry involves a multitude of mechanisms which can be broken down into an even larger number of activities. These mechanisms and activities include launching technology-oriented start-ups, and providing the following: collaborative research, contract research, consulting services, technology licensing, graduate education, advanced training for enterprise staff, exchange of research staff, and other forms of formal or informal information transfer. Taking Taiwan's universities as a research base, this study intends to identify the critical drivers affecting the performance of university technology transfer. The Fuzzy Delphi method, interpretive structural modeling (ISM), and the analytic network process (ANP) are employed sequentially to derive the relative importance of the various performance drivers. Human capital and institutional/cultural resources are the two most emphasized resources for the improvement of university technology transfer in Taiwan. Some policy implications are derived on the basis of these results. •The activities of university technology transfer are composed of various mechanisms.•This study identifies the performance drivers of university technology transfer in Taiwan.•This study applies multi-criteria decision-making methods to obtain the weights of performance drivers.•The weights of performance drivers could serve as a reference to improve university technology transfer in Taiwan.