Measuring the performance of university technology transfer using meta data approach: the case of Dutch universities

The objective o this study is to empirically measure the performance of Dutch university’s technology transfer. Dutch universities are ranked high on research output but there is scarce evidence about the commercialization of research-based innovation. We present a novel approach to measure the performance of university technology transfer using meta data analysis. We use data on research output as meta-data to estimates the potential for technology transfer, and data about the actual technology transfer projects as measured by patents, license agreements and spin-offs. We tested our model for Dutch universities and validated it using data from private and state universities in the US. Our results suggest that most Dutch research universities have poor performance while technical Dutch universities and academic medical center perform well. We pilot-tested our model for selected US universities and the result confirm the validity of our approach. Our approach contributes to the literature on university technology transfer by adding a novel approach for measuring performance of university technology transfer while taking into account university research as the potential for technology transfer.