Monitoring of technology transfer projects in industrial clusters

Abstract

A well-managed Technology Transfer (TT) project is acknowledged as a means to transform research from universities into high added value products and enhance the innovative capabilities of collaborating companies to support regional clusters. Nevertheless, a TT project is a particular innovation process in which the technological dimension is predominant and multiple autonomous but interrelated stakeholders are involved during a limited period of time. For this reason, the conventional tools of project management are not always adapted to monitoring a TT project. As a consequence, there is a need for new tools and metrics to ensure optimal deployment and results. Based on a comprehensive literature analysis and a long-term field observation of five transfer projects, the contribution of the present paper is twofold. First, a conceptual model for a TT process between a Technology Transfer Centre (TTC) and Small and Medium-sized Enterprise (SME) is proposed. Second, a definition is given for a set of indicators to monitor the TT projects after gathering observable facts throughout the collaborative projects. The level of knowledge materialization turns out to be the most important indicator of a TT project defined here, as the IOT (Intermediary Object of Transfer).JEL codes: O31, 032, L24