Abstract

GARCIA, Fernando; AGUILERA, Cristhian  and  CATALAN, Pablo. Dynamics of regional technology transfer in a public university. The case of the University of the Bío Bío. Nova scientia [online]. 2016, vol.8, n.16, pp.331-351. ISSN 2007-0705.

During the last decades, Chile went through significant economic growth that resulted in social and economic welfare. However, such success is overshadowed by various factors, noticealby its current high income inequality, its excessive institutional centralization and its low innovation capacity. In this regard, technology transfer has followed a similar trend: the country has not reached, in spite of its new wealth, international standards thereby postponing its entrance to the knowledge economy. The present article aims to analyze and explore technology transfer dynamics in a public and regional university in Chile: University of Bio-Bio (UBB). The methodology considers quantitative and qualitative methodological tools, by applying first a logit model and second, case studies upon three Research and Develpoment (R&D) project at UBB. The model to be tested defines the ocurrence of technology transfer as its dependent variable and includes four independent variables: i) R&D Public Funding; ii) R&D Capacity; iii) Intermediate Organization at UBB; and iv) Networks. The results show that technology transfer at UBB depends upon R&D Capacity -particularly upon number of patents per principal investigator and R&D leadership- and Networks -in regards to the social capital of the project team-.

Keywords : Technology Transfer; Innovation; Research and Development; Public University.