Improving federal to private sector technology transfer

Technology transfer has become an increasingly important mission of federal laboratories in the United States, with results that benefit the government, private companies, and the U.S. economy. However, the performance of this mission over the past decade has been a mix of successes and failures. Research performed to improve this performance by identifying the characteristics of successful public to private sector technology transfers identified several critical success factors. These include a "transfer culture" in both the government laboratory and private organization, shared personnel of the federal and private organizations throughout the transfer project life cycle, the private organization's ability and intent to adequately fund the transfer project, and the private organization's completion of a business plan for the commercialization of the transferred technology prior to transfer initiation.