Early phase technology management valuation practices by university licensing offices in the United States: empirical data from a survey of the top 100 organizations

Many studies concerning the management of early phase technology revolve around methods for predicting commercial success of the innovation as a critical component to the patenting, licensing, and technology risk reduction investment process. While firms have individualized methodologies for technology development investment strategies, universities typically end their commercialization activities with the licensing of the technology to a firm. Little is written about what financial valuation techniques university technology licensing offices are currently using for determining the financial value of their innovations as part of the licensing process. This paper attempts to add to this field of knowledge via a survey of the top 100 US university-based technology licensing offices to address if they establish a priori financial values for their innovations and what methods they use. Furthermore data was collected on licensing to identify the licensing ratios of the universities, which indicates that the majority of all licensing revenue is for technology in the health/medical related fields.