Commercialising intellectual property emanating from universities in the Western Cape, South Africa

[摘要] ENGLISH ABSTRACT: University technology transfer and the effective commercialisation of intellectual propertyemanating from university campuses has become a topic of growing interest. Universityintellectual property assets have become products generating income streams and competitiveadvantages for its owners as intellectual property grows in stature in knowledge driveneconomies. The purpose of this study is to gain a better understanding of the concept ofintellectual property and the importance of its effective commercialisation for SA universities. Theresearch objectives were to define intellectual property, technological innovation, and technologytransfer within a university setting and to develop a conceptual framework that would identify keydimensions representing the enabling environment for university technology transfer. Thesedimensions were then applied to multiple case studies conducted at SU, UCT, UWC and CPUT.The main research question inquires how effective these four universities have been incommercialising intellectual property assets via recognised technology transfer practices.Textual and numeric primary as well as secondary data were used in this study as part of anempirical ethnographic research design. The inquiry strategy uses a mixture of qualitative andquantitative research approaches in the four embedded case studies for describing and analysingexisting data. Primary data were collected from the partaking universities by developing aqualitative survey questionnaire as research instrument which was used during in-personinterviews to evaluate the effective use of employed technology transfer practices. The resultantoverall research design is descriptive and evaluative in nature, using inductive reasoning.The findings reveal five major internal enablers which comprise the policy environment,institutional commitment, the legal milieu, the funding arena and human resources. Someacademic interviewees as respondents in the case studies were critical in stating the support fromtheir superiors were lacking the commitment expected from them when compared to theuniversities' stated policy documents. A number of respondents to the interviews at the researchintensive universities noted that TTO staff are not available to them as they are simply too busyand often overwhelmed by their workload to provide TT services to academic staff and studentsas inventors. Overall, respondents were satisfied with the level of service they receive from theuniversity TTO. Although this is not a comparative study, the study discovered that the less research-intensiveuniversities have a much shorter pipeline of new invention disclosures for novel technologies, asthey have less funding available to direct to basic or applied research activities. It emerged fromthe literature and the study that university technology transfer is an intriguing and multi-facetedenvironment that requires dedicated staff with unique skills and management capabilities.The study highlights the single biggest factor affecting the rate of new invention disclosures, andultimately the success rate of technology transfer commercialisation activities, as the total annualresearch and development spending at SA universities. The researcher found that withoutsignificant quality and quantity of research and development being conducted, little or no revenuestreams can be expected from new inventions emanating from SA universities.

[发布机构] Stellenbosch University