Analysis of University Management of Emerging Technologies and Recommendations for Developing Countries

ABSTRACT

University management seeks to achieve the objectives established by higher educations institutions, including their third mission, which corresponds to the transfer of research results into the industry; in this regard, emerging technologies play an important role to solve problems identified in the industry. Emerging technologies are those found in the embryonic stage of its life cycle. Although they have features that make them difficult to manage, they can quickly change the dynamics of the market. That is why it is necessary to analyze the management process of these technologies at the university level, due to, in many cases, it is in high education institutions where these technologies arise. This paper presents results of a study aiming at analyzing the process of university management of emerging technologies in a developing country, identifying gaps in such process in relation to referent countries, and proposing recommendations to reduce those gaps. The research methodology included benchmarking to identify best practices concerning referent universities and a case study in which a university research group in a developing country was analyzed. Results indicate that universities of developing countries acknowledge the importance of managing emerging technologies, which should lead to structural changes in the Systems of Science and Technology as well as in the higher educations institutions and in the management of the research groups that generate and use these technologies. However, the analysis identified some key success factors of referent universities to be either absent or acting defitienly in the focal case studied. Finally, some recommendations are proposed to reduce the identified gaps.