The Role of Technology Transfer Offices in Academic Entrepreneurship

Seminar paper from the year 2016 in the subject Business economics - Miscellaneous, grade: 1,3, Technical University of Munich (TIM Lehrstuhl), course: Advanced Seminar Innovation & Entrepreneurship, language: English, abstract: Commercialization of research results within science became more important within the last decades. Especially universities are increasingly challenged to fulfill their third mission of commercialization. Technology transfer from science to industry is broadly based as it ranges from consultancy to the creation of spin-offs, which is the most visible form of technology transfer from science to industry. One opportunity to facilitate technology transfer in terms of spin-off creation is to establish technology transfer offices at research institutions to support scientists in creating spin-offs. Despite the fact, that research has made important contributions regarding the influence of scientist’s individual characteristics on spin-off creation, literature is still lacking regarding the influence of TTOs on scientist’s propensity to create a spin-off. In my work I am trying to provide first insights into the perception of TTOs by scientists and which aspects of consultancy offered by TTOs are of most importance for academic entrepreneurs during the creation of a spin-off.