26th International Association for Management of Technology Conference - IAMOT 2017

The purpose of this paper is to present a qualitative approach to evaluate Technology Transfer Offices’ performance based on a state-of-the-art overview and on the results collected during group meetings (Grounded Theory). The paper outlines studies that have been conducted on TTO’s performance, discussing the variables pointed out by different authors. It also delivers evidences of the importance of bringing practice into theory as experts advanced on such matter by providing a broader view of variables and by introducing a TTO activity diagram. Finally, the paper challenges existing evaluating methodologies as it introduces a methodology – Technology Transfer Octagon - which focuses on a wide range of variables and on the importance of each one of them. It can be used to improve one TTO as it outlines its strengths and weaknesses, but it can also be applied to a group of TTOs in order to indicate the negative and positive impact of the variables on performance.