4. The Cooperative Strategy of Technology Transfer Offices: A Longitudinal Study

The literature on technology transfer offices (TTOs) focuses on the main variables explaining the performance of these organizations. The implicit strategic model considered by the literature is that the TTOs have to control all the activities, resources, competences of the value chain of the technology transfer process. The aim of the TTO is to maximize the revenues of the commercialization of academic results and its role is to manage a linear and unidirectional process. However, this model is not applicable for every university. In France, TTOs developed cooperative strategies with other local TTOs on the one hand, to pool resources and share costs and on the other hand, to structure the regional innovation system. TTOs do not anymore control internally all the activities and accept to share some of them with partners. Instead of having as unique objective to maximize the gains of technology transfer activities, TTOs set up alliances with the aim to diffuse more largely and at a higher speed the research results. The technology transfer process is considered as interactive and multidirectional. This alternative model is illustrated by a longitudinal study of a French University active since a long time in technology transfer activities.