Technology Transfer and Commercialization: Their Role in Economic Development.

摘要

In response to increased globalization and competition, U.S. economic development practitioners seek to promote technology transfer and commercialization as a means to high-value-added development. To aid practitioners in realizing the potential impacts of technology transfer and commercialization, this report: provides a typology of such activities; examines the geography of innovation in the United States; offers a typology of public purpose technology transfer and commercialization programs; and suggests how development practitioners might fruitfully interact with such programs. Industrial R&D and patenting are statistically correlated with higher regional wage levels, but not regional growth. Patenting tends to take place in metropolitan areas with at least 1 million jobs, primarily because of the greater opportunities for technology transfer offered by such areas. While the presence of public R&D can stimulate patenting, regional size has a much larger impact. Less populated regions can create a sustainable role in technology development through linkages with major R&D centers. Commercialization activities tend to be geographically fragmented across the United States and abroad, based on local advantage for individual functions. Regions that are not innovative clusters have an opportunity to specialize in functions that support commercialization.