Institutional Evolution and the Collaborative Development of Technology Transfer Capabilities

Abstract

This article examines the development of university technology transfer operations at the Research Triangle region’s three universities. Organized to commercialize university-based scientific inventions, this expertise was essential to university engagement in the region’s long-term development. Early collaborative efforts to jump-start technology transfer in the region were promoted via a joint licensing consortium. Those early efforts—and their eventual devolution to the universities—are critical to understanding the region’s subsequent development. We document a process of competing institutional logics and institutional interpretation, with officials from each campus continually interpreting the collaborative’s value against their own institution’s evolving needs.