The Establishment of a Technology Transfer Office: Lessons from a University Based in a Rural Setting

In South Africa, the higher education institutions, particularly public ones, remain the largest knowledge producers and employers of knowledge workers. In this regard, it is proper to establish processes that could assist HEIs to exploit their discovered knowledge. One way of exploiting the discovered knowledge is through the technology transfer and commercialisation processes. The aim of this paper is to share the experiences and provide a framework for establishing a Technology Transfer Office or Office of Technology Transfer in a university-based at the rural setting. The paper uses a case study methodology. It applies the competitive intelligence process to briefly discuss how the outputs of one rural university in South Africa led to the establishment of Technology Transfer Office and then from lessons-learned proposes a framework for establishing an Technology Transfer Office.