Effective Factors on Knowledge Commercialization in Payam-e-Noor University

Commercialization of research results refers to a set of efforts aimed at raising capital and increasing the relationship between the academic and research sector and economic and social sector. The present study intends to identify and rank the factors affecting the commercialization process of research results at Payam-e-Noor University in order to determine the extent of influence of the identified factors. Therefore, this is an applied research in terms of purpose, which studies the factors affecting the process of knowledge commercialization in previous studies, using the confirmatory factor analysis approach. Using fuzzy hierarchical analysis, it was determined that legal, economic, manpower, cultural, structural and political, and communicational and information-related barriers are the first to sixth barriers to the knowledge commercialization in Payam-e-Noor University. Using fuzzy DEMATEL technique, the effectiveness and affectability of factors involved in the process of knowledge commercialization were identified. Accordingly, weak legal framework for supporting idea people at the university, inefficiency and ineffectiveness of the rules and regulations for commercialization, lack of regulation for the apportionment of financial gain from commercialization among scholars, lack of skilled and expert human resources in the universities, lack of facilities and financial resources for research commercialization, and lack of mutual recognition between university and industry had the most affectability. In other words, these are the dependent/outcome variables of the model. On the other hand, inadequate knowledge of the faculty members, poor fund management in the university, weakness of universities in wealth creation, absence of university entrepreneurial missions, the absence of up-to-date and effective idea banks and databases in the universities, and lack of effective communication between students and industry sector’s activists had the most effectiveness. In other words, these variables are the independent/causal variables of the model.