Commercialization of Academic Research in Canadian Universities: Optimizing Technology Transfer

In recent years, in addition to the basic tenets of teaching and research, commercialization and innovation have become core priorities in higher education (Friedman & Silberman, 2003; Etzkowitz, 2003; Rasmussen et al., 2006). Universities have the right ingredients to be natural technology transfer incubators with a high influx of innovators and the capability to create new ventures and have high potential to generate a high level of economic development. Commercialization allows the results of innovative research to be utilized through transformation into marketable products or ‘technology transfer’. Since the 1980s, Canadian universities have begun dedicating resources and effort to discover how to best harness the innovation arising out of university-based research for knowledge transfer and revenue generation through commercialization. This thesis focuses on specific university inputs that influence the volume of technology transferred to industry through various commercialization channels and the impact each factor may have considering the institution size. Through data verified primarily from the Association of University Technology Managers’ (AUTM) annual surveys of Canadian and American universities from 2011 to 2015, this study analyzes the effect of administrative characteristics on technology transfer at a university. While the results of the study do not provide much conclusive guidance on the reasons behind growth in university-industry technology transfer, they do suggest that there is some greater effect in large universities that leads to more technology transfer activity than in smaller universities.