공공연구부문에서의 기술이전컨소시엄의 효과와 특성 연구: 공공기술이전컨소시엄 사례를 중심으로

Effectiveness and characteristics of technology transfer consortia in public R&D sector: The case of Korean TT consortia

본 연구는 2002년부터 5년간 운영된 권역별 공공기술이전컨소시엄의 실증분석을 통하여 기술이전컨소시엄의 유효성과 주요 특성요인을 살펴보고자 한다. 유효성 검정은 기술이전프로세스를 토대로 하여 개발된 기술이전효율성지수가 컨소시엄의 운영기간 동안 변화한 정도로 판단하였고, 특성요인의 탐색은 기술이전 메커니즘 연구의 핵심변수인 가입동기, 촉진요인, 장애요인 및 극복과제를 사용하여 이루어졌다. 그 결과, 기술이전컨소시엄에 참여한 대학 또는 정부연구기관의 기술 이전효율성지수가 참여하지 않은 기관에 비하여 더욱 큰 증가를 보였으며, 조사된 특성요인들도 컨소시엄의 직접참여자 그룹과 간접참여자 그룹간에 인식 차가 거의 없는 것으로 판명되었다. 본 연구는 기술이전컨소시엄이 새로운 기술이전 메커니즘으로서의 유의미성과 공통적 특성을 갖는지를 탐색해 보았다는 것에 그 의의가 있다.

Technology transfer (TT) consortium is an affiliation of two or more public research institutions (PRIs) that participate in a common technology transfer activity or pool their resources together, with the objective of facilitating technology transfer. Based on empirical analysis of five regional TT consortia (2002-2006) operating in Korea, this paper suggests their effectiveness by employing a TT performance index (TTPI) and identifies possible characteristics involved, such as motivations, facilitators, barriers, and challenges. TTPI devised in the paper is a new composite TT performance index to measure how much the TT performance of a PH changed in a designated year compared to a base year. All the performance indicators of TTPI are well-structured based on the unique TT process that is prevalent in Korea. Further, TTPI can bring different size and focus of PRIs to the same scale for comparison by double-normalizing. The paper tests the effectiveness of TT consortium for the escalation of TT performances in member PRIs by highlighting the differences of TTPI's between 2005 and 2001. As a result, the paper found that the escalation of TTPI for member PRIs was greater than that for non-member PRIs. As for the characteristics of TT consortia, their respective factors obtained by TT expert survey were computed with proportion tests of differences (Z tests) to compare two perspectives between intramural and extramural groups. One of key findings is that there is general homogeneity in stakeholder perspectives regarding motivations, facilitators, barriers, and challenges. Some notable responses are as follow; the most probable motivation to join TT consortium is to share or exchange TT competences for enhanced performance. Second, the most probable facilitator is professional capability of consortium-hired personnel. Third, the foremost probable barriers to effective TT consortium are frequent change of consortium director and passive participation of member PRIs. Lastly, both publicizing TT consortia and developing performance metrics are the most important for the improvement of TT consortia. The understanding of the characteristics of TT consortia increases the likelihood of accelerated success, because TT consortia path from formation to termination encompasses many concepts, processes, principles, and factors. Finally, an analysis of the survey data combined with expert interview and observation data led the authors to derive five conditions as being critical to viable TT consortia in Korea at early stage of technology transfer systems. These conditions include policy infrastructure, proactive participation, excellent professionals, personal motivation, and teaming mechanisms. It is expected that the Korean evidence is a starting point to develop and refine the theory of TT consortia and for additional studies in other countries.