The skills base of technology transfer professionals

As the importance of technology transfer activities to the growth and survival of public and private organisations has become evident in recent years, researchers have been paying closer attention to the resources and capabilities such organisations will need in order to compete in markets. Yet it is still unclear what skills that individuals who are considering the various activities and contexts they are part of need. This paper investigates the skills that individual technology transfer professionals generally need and how the importance of each of these skills varies by context. It is based on a multiple-phase qualitative and quantitative study of technology transfer skills at the individual level. Results indicate the importance for technology transfer professionals to possess a range of five particular soft and business skills besides having two hard skills such as those related to intellectual property rights and domain-specific knowledge. Our results also highlight the heterogeneity in skills that technology transfer professional mainly draw on depending on the contexts of which they are part.