Extending Pasteur's quadrant: university strategic groups and sources of heterogeneity in university technology transfer office activities

Abstract

We seek to understand how technology transfer offices (TTOs) help universities translate academic research into commercialised products. Building on the innovation literature that postulates that value capture from inventions depends on the nature of the technology, we theorise that the nature of research that the university pursues likely drives the activities within TTOs. We theoretically extend Pasteur's quadrant to the domain of TTO research and posit that TTOs of universities that belong to the same strategic group in 'Pasteur's cube' are likely to have similar activities. Our research suggests that, on the one hand, future investigations of TTOs need to take into account the heterogeneity in their activities rather than treating TTOs of all universities as homogenous and, on the other hand, universities planning to initiate technology transfer activities should look into the processes of the TTOs of universities that are in the same strategic group.