INNOVATION CAPITALISATION OF RESEARCH ANDTECHNOLOGY ORGANISATIONS - Strategic Recommendations for the AIT Austrian Institute of Technology GmbH

Arbeit an der Bibliothek noch nicht eingelangt - Daten nicht geprüft ; Abweichender Titel nach Übersetzung der Verfasserin/des Verfassers ; Research and Technology Organisations (RTOs) have long been a critical part of any nation’s innovation system as a direct mediator between academic research and industrial development. Therefore, they have been a key to commercialisation of many innovations. A rapidly changing globalised economy and society have had an impact on national and international innovation systems, and as a result directly influenced strategies of RTOs. In particular the commercialisation of new innovations by means of licencing, supporting start-up and spin-off companies, has caused a paradigm shift of many European RTOs towards creating a supporting environment for such structures. This has become a vital instrument in supporting their national economies, in remaining relevant internationally and in adding value to the society by creating jobs directly or indirectly (Vivas, 2016). The AIT Austrian Institute of Technology GmbH is one of such European RTOs and also the largest in Austria. This project work has been tasked with investigating better strategies for the AIT for commercialising IP and internally generated knowledge. Therefore, it has analysed specifically the currently present commercialisation strategies of the AIT and has derived recommendations for better appropriation schemes for the organisation. A comparison to successful RTOs in Europe, such as Fraunhofer and Sintef, has shown the potential areas of improvement in particular with respect to spin-off strategies and engagement with start-ups. The shortfall of AIT’s present implementation of commercialisation strategies has been identified in the lack of support structure for knowledge transfer activities and entrepreneurship, both internal as well as external. The recommended strategies have been generalised on the one hand, since they have been found to be applicable to RTOs across the European innovation landscape, but also a ...