An Analysis Of Factors Affecting Federal Laboratory Technology Transfer Transactional Efficiency Practical Measures Proposed In This Article Can Make The Commercialization Of Federal Research And Technologies More Timely And Efficient.

Overview: The timely commercialization of research and technologies requires efficient partnership processes. Yet research transactions commonly drag on. Speed is particularly important for biomedical technologies given their historically long developmental timelines; until now, there has been no systematic analysis of factors influencing innovation-focused partnership transaction timelines. Here we assess how a host of factors affect the time it takes to execute a partnership transaction (that is, the transactional efficiency) through an analysis of US federal laboratory technology transfer partnerships. Although we find that the number of partners, the size of the partnership template document, and the size of an external partner correlate significantly with longer transaction times, neither the presence of intellectual property in the form of patents nor the presence of funding significantly affect timelines. The article concludes by offering steps that agencies and industry can take to hasten transactional efficiency.