Background and Objectives: Knowledge commercialization is a trend that a university can transfer the results of own members' research to the market to make capital. The point to be taken into account in this process is to identify and prioritize the factors contributing to the process of knowledge commercialization. It must be noted that identifying influential factors allows managers and decision makers to make decisions and determine commercialization policies. Accordingly, this research tries to identify and prioritize the factors affecting the commercialization of research results. Identifying the factors influencing the knowledge commercialization allows researchers and scholars to detect the possible barriers and anticipate removing them.
Methodology: This research used qualitative approach and confirmatory factor analysis method to identify the items influencing knowledge commercialization in previous researches through library studies, then using Delphi method, it sought the opinions of knowledge commercialization experts about the identified factors in the University of Isfahan. The samples consisted of 262 faculty members and graduated students of Isfahan University in the academic year of 2018-19 who have commercialized the results of their research or planned to commercialize but failed and also were familiar with the process of knowledge commercialization. In this research, descriptive statistics including mean and standard deviation were run to calculate the opinions of experts on the indicators of knowledge commercialization. Furthermore, Kendall's coefficient of concordance (W) was used to determine the degree of unity in experts' opinions. Also, to prioritize the factors, Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) was used.
Findings: Among the three factors under study, background factors with a weight of 0.456, content factors with a weight of 0.339, and structural factors with a weight of 0.226 ranked the first to third priorities, respectively as the factors affecting knowledge commercialization. Applying fuzzy AHP, the sub-criteria for each of the main factors were compared as a pair. Defuzzyfication results of structural sub-criteria show that the "financial and information resources" with a weight of 0.359, "hard capabilities, processes, technology, and capabilities" with a weight of 0.343, and the "networking strategic links" with a weight of 0.298 were ranked first to third, respectively. Moreover, Defuzzyfication results of the content sub-criteria show that "knowledge base and research quality" with the weight of 0.507, "soft capabilities; human and marketing skills" with a weight of 0.301, and "internal management of the organization" with the weight of 0.192 were ranked first to third, respectively. Identifying the ultimate priority of indicators affecting the knowledge commercialization with the help of pairwise comparison showed that among the indicators related to the sub-criteria of financial and information resources, the index of "providing the required financial resources" with a weight of 0.577 is the most important one. Among the indicators of strategic links, the index of "establishing strategic relations between the university and industry" with a weight of 0.564 is in the first priority. Also, of the five indicators related to the sub-criterion of hard capabilities, the index of "creating a center / institution of commercialization" with a weight of 0.245 is the first priority. Among the four indicators of internal management, the index of "strengthening and promoting the culture of commercialization at universities" with a weight of 0.307 is the first priority. Furthermore, a pair comparison of the innovative infrastructure sub-criteria revealed that the "communication infrastructure" index with a weight of 0.429 is the first priority. The fuzzy values related to the sub-criteria of the political and legal environment confirm that the index of "commercial support laws and regulations" with a weight of 0.548 is the first priority. Among the four indicators related to the sub-criteria of "technical, economic and market environment", the index of "market needs and demand for research results" is in the first priority.
Discussion: One of the obstacles to knowledge commercialization at the University of Isfahan is the lack of communication infrastructure to organize the results of academic research and provide it to related industries for exploitation. Lack of knowledge about academic researchers and the needs of the industrial sector as well as inability to communicate effectively with the industrial sector are the factors that lead to a failure in the knowledge commercialization. Obviously, the connection between university and industry will be effective in conveying the results of academic research. On the other hand, lack of information network for registering ideas, patent and research results in the Deputy of Research and communication with industry at the University of Isfahan has caused the owners of ideas and inventors to face a bulk of obstacles to transfer research results or register their ideas. The lack of supportive policies in the field of intellectual property ownership is also of the concerns in this respect. Because the lack of guarantee in the protection of intellectual property rights lead to the transfer of academic research results through the bases other than the academic ones and the role of universities in this regard be overlooked. Given the existence and occurrence of such problems, it seems necessary to design and use the information system for registering and transferring inventions by considering the laws of intellectual property owners at the University of Isfahan.