Technological project portfolio selection in the front end of innovation for a Higher Education Institute: The development of an evaluation tool

Higher Education Institutes (HEI) develop technological projects as part of their on-going academic and research activities. Faculty activities are, among others, academic, research, patenting, and attending social and industrial needs, some of them resulting in intellectual capital. Therefore the opportunity exists for Early Stage Technologies (EST) generated by the HEI to be licensed and exploited. Also, since there is limited funding for EST projects development, HEI need to assess their technological project portfolio and select the most promising ones. Within this context, some challenging questions need to be solved: how to decide what projects should receive further funding? How much information is needed in order to make a decision? This research is focused to the development of a comprehensive evaluation tool that aims this objective: to select the best technology projects for the HEI. To achieve this, a bibliographic analysis was performed to identify the factors that influence or impact the commercial success; also, information related to technology assessment in the early stage, technology portfolio assessment criteria, and process and valuation methods for technology was analyzed. Special attention was put to the tools used by the Technology Transfer Offices to determine inventions license priority and important intangible aspects that influence investment decision.