University´s Commercialization Landscape: linking industry, license agreement and licensee

The purpose of this paper is to shed a new light and provide new empirical evidence in research commercialization literature by reviewing contracts of technology commercialization agreements and by mapping the landscape of commercial technology transfer in Denmark. We explore the tendencies and patterns as well as the geographical horizon of licensed technologies. Our analysis of technology licensing landscape has showed stable increase in university´s commercialization activities in the period from 2000-2015. To take a step further, we extend the classical research of patenting activity to the commercialization activity. We find that most of university´s patents are sold and not licensed; most of the licensees are incumbent firms, however, the amount of commercialization contracts signed with academic spin-outs are not lagging far behind in the total numbers. Geographically, there is a clear pattern that most of the technologies are sold to Danish companies within Denmark indicating that university´s main contribution is primarily for regional and national markets, especially around the capital area. Based on that, we make conclusions and suggestions for university managers and policy makers.