Skip to main content

Thank you for visiting nature.com. You are using a browser version with limited support for CSS. To obtain the best experience, we recommend you use a more up to date browser (or turn off compatibility mode in Internet Explorer). In the meantime, to ensure continued support, we are displaying the site without styles and JavaScript.

Technology transfer and idea commercialization

Nature Biotechnology volume 26, pages 711–712 (2008)Cite this article

Technology transfer professionals work at the interface of science and business to help move discoveries forward for the public good.

So just what is technology transfer? It is the process of transferring scientific and technical knowledge from one individual or organization to another for economic advantage—generally for the purpose of commercializing that knowledge. In the academic environment, informal technology transfer happens when a student graduates and takes a job at a company: knowledge that the student has gained will be transferred to the employer in a diffuse way. More formally, we tend to think of academic technology transfer in the context of scientific or technical knowledge that is protected by a patent.

This is a preview of subscription content

Access options

Buy article

Get time limited or full article access on ReadCube.

$32.00

Buy

All prices are NET prices.

Author information

Affiliations

  1. Judith Sheft is associate vice president of technology development at the New Jersey Institute of Technology, University Heights, Newark, New Jersey 07102, USA. sheft@njit.edu

    Judith Sheft

Authors
  1. Judith Sheft
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Rights and permissions

Reprints and Permissions

About this article

Cite this article

Sheft, J. Technology transfer and idea commercialization. Nat Biotechnol 26, 711–712 (2008). https://doi.org/10.1038/nbt0608-711

Download citation

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/nbt0608-711

Search

Advanced search

Quick links

Nature Briefing

Sign up for the Nature Briefing newsletter — what matters in science, free to your inbox daily.

Get the most important science stories of the day, free in your inbox. Sign up for Nature Briefing