A Human-Centered Theoretical Framework to Mitigate Reification in Technology Transfer Research

The incidence of technologies created with the support of federal funding at universities and federal laboratories that are transferred to the private sector is nowhere close to its potential. The natural question that this observation raises is why has technology transfer research not led to a significantly higher incidence of technology transfer? This paper argues that reification is a primary trait of the analytical frameworks used in technology transfer studies and has detrimental effects on technology transfer research. It examines how reification can adversely impact technology transfer research by distorting our understanding of technology transfer, adversely impacting descriptive research, overstating causal relationships, oversimplifying complex causal mechanisms, and obscuring the role of human agency. It presents a human-centered theoretical framework to mitigate reification. The framework presented has practical implications for technology transfer policy, practice, and research particularly policy design, organizational alignment, and metrics. The suggestions for extending the work presented in this paper focus on empirically testing the HCF and developing measurement instruments to operationalize the human-centered mechanisms of mediation in the framework. This paper contributes to the field by introducing a methodological innovation, identifying a potential flaw in widely used analytical frameworks, and exploring an under-examined topic in technology transfer research.