Priority Challenges of University Technology Transfer with Interpretative Structural Modeling and MICMAC Analysis

Abstract

Translating university technology via the university–industry route faces an array of challenges. Subsequently, understanding the interrelationships of these challenges hopes to provide a better outlook on the complex nature of the university technology transfer (UTT) process. Such an agenda remains a gap in the domain literature. To advance this oversight, this study intends to identify the UTT challenges and determine their complex contextual relationships. The interpretative structural modeling, together with the MICMAC analysis, was sequentially adopted to derive the overarching structure of the challenges of UTT. A case study in a public university in the Philippines was conducted to carry out these objectives. Findings show that time constraints, knowledge being too theoretical, high costs of managing joint research projects, complex organizational structure, institutional bureaucracy, geographic distance, and lack of national benchmark are driving challenges that influence other challenges in impeding UTT in the representative Philippine university. These findings provide policy insights to key decision-makers and stakeholders on the success of technology transfers.

Optimal Planning of University Technology Transfer Measures With FDANP-F-FlowSort and an Extended Multiobjective PROMETHEE V

“…Anderson et al's [7] empirical work provided strong evidence of inefficiency among universities in the US with 47 out of 54 assessed universities classified as inefficient. To date, this barrier remains to be a popular topic in the UTT literature (e.g., [8]) because of the complexity of the social and economic system that surrounds it. Lastly, the fourth theme concerns UTT organizational structure which mainly talks about university TTOs.…”

“…Although the work of Miller et al [5] is comprehensive, it was intended to provide a general view of the problems reported in UTT studies instead of presenting specific UTT barriers. The work of Quiñones et al [8] addresses this gap. In their study, 24 specific UTT barriers were obtained from a systematic literature review and the subsequent Delphi process.…”

“…The discussion of the 24 UTT barriers is reserved in the succeeding section of this study. The subsequent publications by the same research team investigated the intertwined relationships of these barriers [11] and the use of these interrelationships in prioritizing the barriers [12]. However, the development and prioritization of strategies (or measures) for addressing these barriers remain unresolved in the current literature, which is a major gap as such an initiative provides a natural extension in managerial decision-making following the need for measures as solutions (or approximations thereof) to address these barriers.…”

“…In this study, various measures are developed to address the 24 UTT barriers of Quiñones et al [8]. In the multicriteria sorting problem addressed in this work, the measures are considered as the "alternatives" to be sorted.…”

“…The sorting process will, therefore, depend on the measures' (as alternatives) degree of contribution in addressing the UTT barriers (as the attributes). To account for the influence of the interdependencies of the UTT barriers, this work makes use of Quiñones et al's [11] results to estimate the relative weights of barriers considering their intertwined relationships.…”