Secrets of success and failure in commercializing US government R&D laboratory technologies: a structured case study approach

With the end of Cold War, the US government started encouraging defence con version and commercialization activities. Although currently highly contest ed in the political arena for their tangible short-term economic benefits, these activities have fostered multiple high-tech government-university-ind ustry partnerships and helped shape regions of emerging clusters of high-te ch entrepreneurship, such as the Rio Grande Technology Corridor in the sout hwestern United States, where Sandia and Los Alamos National Laboratories a re located, or the Austin, Texas technopolis. This paper studies, compares and contrasts case studies of high-tech strate gic alliances, spin-offs, CRADAs, and other related modalities of technolog y transfer and commercialization, it aims to enhance the understanding of t he role and potential of a case study to produce powerful new 'performance metrics' which could complement structured, quantitative metrics in a hybri d approach to assessing and reengineering technology transfer and commercia lization efforts. It could further lead towards the formulation of an effec tive mid-range theory for technology transfer and commercialization combini ng micro-level with macro-level elements and concepts.