Performance Evaluation of University Research Commercialization at the Universities and Institutions of Higher Education of Iran

Nowadays, commercializing intellectual properties has become one of the institutional goals of universities in the higher education system. In fact, the universities are generally taking an entrepreneurial framework. Commercialization of university research may have a positive role in the development of economies through job creations and income empowerment. Therefore, performance evaluation of university research commercialization at the higher education institutes is an important subject and it has a key function in the policy making to develop science and technology. The purpose of this paper is to evaluate and rank the efficiency of universities and higher education institutions in research commercialization. The results of this paper confirm that the University of Tehran, Tarbiat Modarres University, Shiraz Technology, Basic Sciences of Zanjan and the Art University of Isfahan have relatively higher efficiently in the research commercialization and can be considered best practices.