Technology Transfer Offices: a Systematic Review of the Literature and Future Perspective

This study presents a systematic literature review on technology transfer offices (TTOs). It attempts to identify and characterize the existing literature that uses TTO as an object of study and presents a plan for future research in this context. We considered the Scopus and Web of Science databases to analyze the papers published between 1988 and 2020. The search resulted in the selection and analysis of 186 articles. A systematic analysis was conducted with the help of Excel and the VOSviewer software, followed by a content analysis. The results revealed that, despite the growing interest in research on TTOs, a greater concentration of studies have analyzed TTO strategy and technology transfer performance. Other topics such as human resources, financial resources, and networks have been less studied. This paper establishes the grounds for grasping the gaps existing in the literature and proposes a future research agenda. Thus, this research contributes to the theoretical knowledge of themes related to TTOs because it analyzed the actual literature, identified gaps in the literature, provides researchers with new insights into the TTOs, and presented research opportunities about the main problems of TTOs that can be solved from the research development focused on resolution.