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Technology transfer offices as boundary spanners in the pre-spin-off process: the case of a hybrid model

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Abstract

Over the past decades, universities have increasingly become ambidextrous organizations reconciling scientific and commercial missions. In order to manage this ambidexterity, technology transfer offices (TTOs) were established in most universities. This paper studies a specific, often implemented, but rather understudied type of TTO, namely a hybrid TTO model uniting centralized and decentralized levels. Employing a qualitative research design, we examine how and why the two TTO levels engage in diverse boundary spanning activities to help nascent spin-off companies move through the pre-spin-off process. Our research identifies differences in the types of boundary spanning activities that centralized and decentralized TTOs perform and in the parties they engage with. We find geographical, technological and organizational proximity to be important antecedents of the TTOs’ engagement in external and internal boundary spanning activities. These results have important implications for both academics and practitioners interested in university technology transfer through spin-off creation.

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Notes

  1. University spin-offs are defined as new ventures initiated within a university setting and based on technology derived from university research (Rasmussen and Borch 2010).

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Acknowledgments

The authors would like to thank all respondents who participated in the data collection for this study. The first author also gratefully acknowledges the financial support provided by Research Foundation Flanders. We would further like to thank the organizers and participants of the ZEW workshop on spin-off entrepreneurship in Mannheim, November 2011, for their comments on our paper. Finally, we thank the guest editor and two anonymous reviewers for their comments that helped us to improve our paper.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. University of Ghent, Tweekerkenstraat 2, 9000, Ghent, Belgium

    Annelore Huyghe, Mirjam Knockaert & Mike Wright

  2. Centre for Entrepreneurship, University of Oslo, Oslo, Norway

    Mirjam Knockaert

  3. Imperial College Business School, 46 Exhibition Road, London, SW7 2AZ, UK

    Mike Wright

  4. Department of Management, Economics and Industrial Engineering, Politecnico di Milano, Piazza Leonardo da Vinci, 32, 20133, Milan, Italy

    Evila Piva

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  1. Annelore Huyghe
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Correspondence to Annelore Huyghe.

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Huyghe, A., Knockaert, M., Wright, M. et al. Technology transfer offices as boundary spanners in the pre-spin-off process: the case of a hybrid model. Small Bus Econ 43, 289–307 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11187-013-9537-1

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