Technology Transfer Activities in Universities and Public Research Organizations: A Literature Overview

This theoretical paper aims at collecting and reviewing the existing literature on two underexplored topics related to Technology Transfer. In fact, while researchers working on this topic have focused mainly on Universities and on quantitative analysis of Technology Transfer activities, some topics remain underexplored. Among these topics we focus in particular on the scientific works performing qualitative analyses via exploitation of case studies and on those dealing with Technology Transfer activities of nonUniversity Large Public Research Organizations. Aim of the paper is to highlight and put on the spot unconventional topics of research. The paper performs a comprehensive literature review of these fields, introduced by an analysis of literature on University-Industry interaction performed in order to frame the main research topics. A final section resumes the results of the literature review and sets suggestions for further research.