New technology transfer metrics for the National Institute of Standards and Technology

New technology transfer metrics relevant to the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) are presented in this paper. From a public sector management perspective, these metrics are important because they extend the current measures of technology transfer to include metrics that are unrelated to the size of the federal laboratory in question. This extension allows for a more meaningful comparison of some aspects of technology transfer activities at federal laboratories with differing sizes, missions, and policies. This paper applies proposed measures of technology transfer to data on NIST’s technology transfer activities, compares these metrics across multiple organizations, provides suggestions for the interpretation of these metrics, describes limitations of these metrics, and suggests areas for future research.