Knowledge Transfer to Industry at Selected R1 Research Universities in North Carolina

Abstract

Public universities in the United States are divided into different levels of type by research agendas. Large public universities (typically known as R1 research oriented universities) are directed to serve the public interest by developing transferrable knowledge (patents and intellectual property) that can leverage the public investment made in these large universities and their research agendas through state and federal funding by enhancing social and commercial goals of the funding entities. This paper is an impact assessment of formal and informal industry collaboration and knowledge transfer activities study and looked at technology transfer offices, secondary information and public reports such as patent filings to determine if the level of knowledge transfers was increasing or decreasing or staying the same at three large public universities in the USA (North Carolina, UNC Charlotte and North Carolina State) and two North Carolina R1 private schools (Duke University and North Carolina State University. My primary hypothesis for the research was that much of the research and knowledge at public universities was not finding its way to industry use either through licensing or other means and that various methods (i.e., research papers) of transferring this knowledge were ineffective in making this transfer. My research concluded that despite strong state and federal funding of this research as well as private grants researchers tended to concentrate on research that enhanced their academic publications’ reputations which is resulting in fewer academic papers. The practical economic benefits of much of this research was doubtful since the correlation to outputs such as patents was not improving but plateauing over time in some cases.