Building Successful Technology Commercialization Teams: Pilot Empirical Support for the Theory of Cascading Commitment

Abstract

Improving the process of commercializing a technology from a public lab requires a deep understanding of which factors actually contribute to successful commercialization. Such factors are complex, including the quality of the technology itself, choice of transfer mechanism, quality of business intelligence, project evaluation and selection techniques, team building processes, organizational structures, reward and penalty structures, financial support, human resources support, and project management tools, among others. This article focuses on the improvement of team-building processes. It describes a pilot empirical test of the theory of cascading commitment, using data from a study of 34 technology transfer cases from 5 different Canadian federal labs. Of the 34 cases, 20 were successful, 11 were unsuccessful, and 3 were uncertain. In this paper, "success" was defined as the private sector manufacturer's perception of how well the project attained the profit objective associated with sales of a new product which embedded the new technology. The pilot results provide directional support for the key propositions of the theory: 1) a complete team of both public and private organizations is necessary; 2) a complete team of key individuals ("linchpins") from within each organization is necessary; 3) there is an optimal sequence for recruiting the organizational partners; 4) there is an optimal stage for recruiting each organizational partner; 5) high commitment from every linchpin is necessary; 6) linchpin commitment to the team is determined by a variety of factors; and 7) the probability of success is improved if the team of linchpins remains intact until the commercial launch is achieved. Some provisional implications for management practice are provided, as well as suggestions for future research.