A Journey through University Technology Transfer, Organizational Learning and the Search for Innovation

This Ph.D. thesis has been built on three complementary bodies of literature: university technology transfer, organizational learning from failure, and literature on the search for innovation. I'm interested in studying about the creation, transfer, and application of new scientific knowledge and technology and more specifically: where do new innovative ideas come from? What is the role of Academia? Who is paying for it? How do researchers transfer new technologies to society? Therefore, the three papers in my dissertation represent different levels of analysis about the broad topic of innovation within academia and explore this topic with the help of different theoretical frameworks. 1. Micro-Level: the paper about the heuristics, corresponds to my interest in understanding and disentangling how innovative ideas and technologies are created from a cognitive point of view. To write it, I used the theoretical framework of heuristics and business model literature. From the results, I infer that there is a heuristic that best fits the process of shaping an innovative idea given uncertain conditions: the heuristic of similarity. 2. Meso-Level: at this level of analysis I explore how organizations involved in transferring innovation (university technology transfer process) learn from their past poor performances. For this study, I link literature on organizational learning and university technology transfer. 3. Macro-Level: in this study, I deepen how the system of private and public funding supports the process of creating and spreading innovation, and how these different types of funding interact with each other. The theoretical framework includes the university technology transfer and R&D literature.