“Technology assessment to transfer them from an engineering university to a business environment”

Technology transfer from universities to the business environment plays a key role in use of the open innovation concept. Meanwhile, in Ukraine which has a sufficiently high level of scientific and technological capacity, universities do not fully respond to market demands and do not receive the proper commercial results. One of the reasons for this is that current methods and models do not allow justifying the level of techno­ logy transferability. This article aims to present a methodological approach to assessing the transferability of technologies from universities to the business environment and to develop a method for determining the integral index of technology transferabil­ ity. Therefore, the study considered and substantiated options for this transfer based on the sale of technology licenses by the universities; creation of spin­off companies by the university; technology transfer as startups; conclusion of a joint activity agree­ ments; scientific and technical cooperation. A market technology launch matrix was developed to select these models. The developed methodological tools can be used to compare investment projects. The results obtained were tested based on technology of personal passive optically stimulated luminescence dosimetry of ionizing radiation.


INTRODUCTION
Over the last years, the global economy is characterized by accelerated rates of innovation progress. This necessitates reformulating the cur rent vision of generating, transferring and commercializing innova tive technologies, which must not only fit the current model of the in novation process, but also take into account its dynamic development. The nature of science and technology relationship has acquired the latest features, caused by a significant reduction in the pace between breakthrough innovations, significant economy digitalization, mar ket convergence, etc. Scientific and technological progress stimulates the emergence of many market effects from the spread of innovative technologies (spillovereffect, diffusion, multiplication, synergy, etc.) that have not been popular so far. Meanwhile, the paradigm of uni versity functioning is changing, that is, becoming active market in frastructure participants, they not only play educational and scientific roles, but also entrepreneurial one. Opportunities given to Ukrainian universities (in particular, being founders/cofounders of other legal entities) actualize the format of academic entrepreneurship for them, based on stimulating the development of intellectual capital and in novative activity. Given this, technology transfer from universities to the business environment becomes critical in supporting the innova tive infrastructure of the regions and the country. However, currently, Ukrainian universities, having a sufficiently high level of innovative capacity, do not fully meet the needs of today's intellectual economy and, therefore, do not receive proper commercial results. All the above actualizes the need for economic instruments to reformat the introduction of the innovative economy, among which the technology transfer from their development sites to the business environment in one of the most important. In particular, the scientific problem is to develop new approaches to the transfer of technologies based on the transferability level and aimed at reducing the time lag between development and commercialization; this can be the basis for justify ing investment projects, selecting specific scenarios for further development of the technology market, modeling the effect of their launch on the market, etc.

THEORETICAL BASIS
According to the annual report of the global R&D funding forecast (Annual Report, 2018), world gross expenditures, which in 2017 were 3.4%, in 2018 will increase to 4.1% (to USD 2.19 trillion, ac cording to purchasing power parity), which indi cates a significant increase in innovative activity of the countries. This forecast also indicates that the global economy is characterized by a tendency to combine investment in the scientific, govern mental and entrepreneurial areas.
It should be noted that among the major econo mies in the sphere of R&D funding, the num ber developing countries has increased. This fact proves the possibility of developing innovative ac tivities of countries not only on the basis of tech nological dominance, but also based on increasing the efficiency of its activities efficiency in the in ternational value chains. Therefore, implementing their innovative capacity through efficient tech nology transfer, developing countries have every reason to gradually become technologically ad vanced in the world.
The Global R&D Funding Forecast (Annual Report, 2018) confirms that, globally in 2018, among the factors influencing the formation of R&D budg ets by economic entities, the most important are: operating costs (55%), capital requirements (45%), administration approval (45%) and staffing con siderations (41%). These factors directly affect the effectiveness of the R&D organization, technology readiness for transfer and the transfer itself.
According to the data of the Global R&D Funding Forecast (Annual Report, 2018), factors for im proving efficiency (56%) and building an inno vation culture (56%) of R&D are important. It is noteworthy that the development of innovation culture is impossible without the coherent work of innovative ecosystems and technology transfer.
In European countries, the socalled "European paradox" is still popular, when out of s significant amount of R&Ds carried out, only a small part of their results is transferable (Olsen & Maassen, 2007). To stimulate innovation activity and im prove the technology transfer efficiency in the EU countries, one of the five objectives of the "Europe 2020" strategy (Europe, 2010) is to increase the share of expenditures for R&D in GDP composi tion to 3% by 2020. A preliminary analysis showed that in 2015, EU member states spent about 283 billion euros on R&D, which was 2.03% of GDP, well above the level achieved more than ten years ago -in 2004 (1.76%).
A lack of understanding of technology transfer ability level and market readiness is often one of the reasons for slow technology transfer. This, in turn, significantly reduces the demand for scienti fic and technical developments both from the state and private business. As to the organizational structure development for the technology transfer ecosystem formation, this problem is outlined by Good, Knockaert, Soppe, and Wright (2018), and WnukPel (2018), while Battaglia, Landoni, and Rizzitelli (2017) analyze it in the con text of organizational structural backgrounds for technology transfer from universities to the business environment.
Rayevnyeva, Aksonova, and Ostapenko (2018) focus on the problem of forming and identifying the most effective types of partnership between universities and business environment in Ukraine.
Prokopenko, Holmberg, and Omelyanenko (2018) consider the ICT tools used to manage research and development as well as industrial design, and devel op a conceptual model for implementing these tools for universities to participate in innovation networks.
To evaluate innovative technologies, most coun tries often use common approaches (manuals).
If until recently it was believed that the parameters of a new technology should be a major component of its market entry strategy, now that technology is at the forefront, there is a time and a way of its entrance to the market, which should be based on the justification of the technology transferability level. The degree of justification of the technology transferability methodological support influences the speed of its transfer and the effectiveness of technological development of both market entities and the state as a whole.
Universities are the platforms for the development of technologies, on the one hand, and on the oth er, are business entities; they place their develop ments on the market and increasingly play the key role in technology transfer. Universities become the leading links in the system of interactive co operation "university -authority -business", and are one of the main participants in the countries' innovation infrastructures.
According to Chukhray et al. (2012, p. 100), poten tial customers -industrial enterprises -are usu ally not interested in supporting university pro jects because of high risk and long payback peri ods. Enterprises are ready to implement only fully completed projects with minimal investment and with a short payback period. Universities, in turn, do not have the working capital to bring their de velopments to readiness for implementation, and in some cases, developers unduly drive up the price. In this way, each participant in the process tries to maximize economic effect of its activities on the market and strives seeks to minimize its risks. Therefore, one of the ways out of this situ ation, to strengthen its competitive position, is to develop and implement approaches to establishing the level of technology transferability.
Given this theoretical basis, the aim is to offer suggestions for assessing the readiness of technol ogies for transferring them from an engineering university to the business environment.

RESULTS AND DISCUSSION
To assess the technology transferability level from the academic environment to business structures, a thorough analysis of all the components of this process is required. In the area of technology transfer from universities to the business envi ronment, such an assessment is mainly conduct ed based on an integrated approach, which means studying the value, cost, technological and other characteristics of the technology, combined with the common goal -to provide an integrated as sessment of the transferability degree.
In the context of the evaluation procedure, com plexity is the unity of goals, objectives, content, methods and forms of evaluation. When evalu ating the technology transferability level, an in tegrated approach performs the following func tions: 1) it orients the assessment to the target re sult, rather than the interim results (this allows assessing the technology readiness in the context of its market competitiveness); 2) it promotes thor ough and comprehensive research of technology at all stages of its development; 3) it leads to the successful preparation of technology by adjusting the structural and functional interrelationships between the stages of technology preparation and their management, taking into account their hier archy; and 4) it facilitates the effective technology transfer.
The peculiarity of an integrated approach to the as sessment of technology transfer from universities to the business environment is to simultaneously consider different aspects of their implementation (technical, economic, organizational, environ mental, social, demographic, psychological, etc.). In particular, the use of an integrated approach to technology assessment allows taking into account not only the results of the R&D themes identified at universities, but also those obtained indirectly.
Often, in the course of the main work, scientific and technical workers receive additional results, not related to the set technical tasks, but are in teresting for further research within already in dependent R&D. The concept of open innovation indicates that such branch results lead to valuable discoveries. With this in mind, it is necessary to pay attention to these results. At the same time, it is necessary to take into account a number of mar ket phenomena that can occur with this technolo gy (convergence effect, spillover effect, multiplica tive effect, etc.).
In the world practice, the assessment of the technology readiness for transfer based on the readiness levels concept is widespread; it in cludes: the technology readiness level, the pat ent readiness level, and the market readiness The model is based on an integrated approach and consists of five evaluation blocks, namely, the con sumer value of technology; the technology com petitiveness; the technology readiness; technology cost; and risk of technology.
Each model component contains many steps of the technology evaluation on its transferability. This conceptual model takes into account the fun damental aspects of the technology transfer par adigm; it is based on the polyaspectness of tech nology transfer, systematizes and clarifies the ele ments of technology transfer from universities to the business environment, and describes the inter action between its categories.
The proposed model should be considered in terms of the controlling adaptive system. The fact that it is influenced by its subsystems is the effect of predefined contained in the blocks of the model.
Technology transfer is a relatively predictable pro cess; however, due to the multidimensional nature of its capabilities, it is worth carefully analyzing all its components.
Technology transferability should be considered at three substantial levels that explain the content of a particular stage of technology readiness: • І level: preliminary definition technology transferability; • ІІ level: substantiation of possibilities for transfer of the selected technology; • ІІІ level: choice of technology transfer option.
The abovementioned stages of the technology evaluation by components are divided into the stages of technology readiness: stage 1 -con ceptual; stage 2 -technology development; stage 3 -ready technology (presentation of pro totype, experimental example, etc.); and stage 4 -realization. Table 1 provides characteristics of the proposed model.
One of the important features of the model pro posed is that it is based on the multifactorial inter action of the university subsystems and the exter nal environment and on maximizing the technol ogy transfer efficiency.
This conceptual model takes into account the paradigmatic principles of technology transfer (Chukhray & Mrykhina, 2018a): structural and functional interconnections in the system of fac tors of business entity's external and internal en vironment; these factors interact based on knowl edge transformation into technology (product) re sulting in the emergence of new knowledge, which, in turn, will be used to generate new technologies.
The proposed model provides an understanding of the subject of technology transfer as the relation ship between its participants concerning creation and transfer of value added in the form of tech nology, taking into account the impact of world technological development.
Evaluation of technologies for their transfer often requires analysis of interdisciplinary aspects, con sideration of components that differ substantial ly in completeness, etc. Therefore, it is not always possible to immediately justify the aggregate level of the technology completeness. This requires ag gregation of the indicators included in the model.
Given that the evaluation of technology concern ing its transferability foresees a thorough evalu ation of each stage according to the model com The model is integrated into the system of strategic development of the university, each of its levels and stages is provided by the components of the university's development strategy ponents, it is advisable to aggregate the obtained evaluation to establish an integral (aggregate) in dicator of the technology transferability degree.
Having compared the values of the integral indi cator with the regulatory limits, one can conclude on the level of the technology transferability. For this purpose, it is advisable to use formal and mathematical methods, in particular, to consid er the components of the evaluation model of the technology transferability level in the form of a polygon (Figure 1). According to the model developed, the polygon will consist of five equivalent triangles, whose sides have the same gradation and contain nine identical divisions. Each division signifies a cer tain stage of technology readiness for transfer in accordance with the relevant evaluation compo nents. If you describe these five connected trian gles in a circle, their sides (which are respectively the radii of the circle) will divide the circle into five sharp angles of 72° (360:5 = 72).
Knowing where the technology is at a particu lar stage at the time of evaluation, one can set the lengths of the triangle's sides (a, b, c, d, e). Determine the area of each triangle S by multiply ing half the product of the two known sides on the sinus of angle α between them. For example, for triangle 1 define S by: (2) Given the abovementioned approach to evaluat ing the technology transferability level, the limits have been developed for the analysis of the ob tained integral indicator values ( Table 2).
The gravity degree of the integral index value of one or another limit can be explained by study ing the data in each specific situation. The method of graphic construction gives makes it possible to quickly obtain a generalized conclusion about the level of the technology transferability. The formal Source: Author design.

Figure 1. Determining the polygon for the level of technology transferability
Legend: 1 -the numbering of triangles that form a polygon.  izing radiation (IR) developed at Lviv Polytechnic National University (Ukraine). The technology is innovative both for the Ukrainian dosimetry in dustry and for foreign markets; it is used in the fol lowing industries: defense industry, nuclear power engineering, agriculture, food and pharmaceuti cal industry, medicine, etc. The OSL dosimetry IR technology contains many innovative products: dosimeter, detectors; a device for determining the radiation absorbed by the detector cavity; a meas urement method.
To determine the integral indicator of the tech nology readiness level of OSL dosimetry IR, the polygon area is calculated ( Figure 2) and data are interpreted ( Table 3).
The result, 83.138, falls within the limits of the sec ond stage values for technology transferability, in particular, the development stage. At the same time, the value of the integral indicator, obviously, grav itates to the third stage -the finished technology, which is explained by the high values of the indi cators from the blocks "Evaluation of the technology consumer value", "The technology competitiveness evaluation" and "The technology consumption evaluation"; these are indicators that are relatively easy to estimate and predict even at the R&D stage.
For technology of OSL dosimetry means IR: for the security and defense sector of Ukraine, the breakeven point is 48.3% of nominal produc tion, for the Ukrainian NPP sector, the breakeven point is 56.7%, which confirms the financial sus tainability of both projects.
The resulting integral indicator will be adjust ed and refined as the technology of the OSL dosimetry means IR is further developed. This can be solved partially by using the geometric con struction (polygons) method, but deviations are possible due to different rates of the technology The results of the evaluation of the technology transfer level are the basis for substantiating the choice of future scenarios of their development in the market. In addition to the approach proposed by Tsybuliov (2011) to the transfer of university technology, the following technology transfer op tions are considered: 1) an option based on universitylicensed tech nology sales developed and protected by the property right; 2) an option based on the establishment of type "spin" companies by a university; 3) an option involving technology transfer in the form of startups; 4) an option based on the conclusion of a joint activity agreement with/without the creation of a legal entity;  Figure 3.

Level of consumer value of technology
In the matrix segments, technology transfer mod els are determined, which prevail in case of detec tion of any given technology transferability level. The matrix is based on the ratio of two indicators -the level of the technology consumer value and the level of its technological readiness.
Given the assessment of the technological readi ness level and its consumer value, which may be low, medium or high (determined based on the lev el determination of the technology transferability, geometric construction (polygon) (see Figure 2)), the technology will fall into the corresponding segment of the matrix.
The ratio of indicators is determined by quadrants 1 ... 9, which indicate the choice of any given tech nology transfer option.

CONCLUSION
The study substantiated options for assessing the level of technology transfer. They consider contempo rary theoretical and methodological principles of technology transfer from universities to the business environment.
A method for determining the integral indicator of the technology transfer rate calculated based on the aggregation of indicators for each component of the above mentioned options is proposed. According to the interdisciplinary nature of technology evaluation, this approach allows to see the overall level of the technology readiness for transfer, to evaluate the degree of gravity of the technology readiness for a specific component of the evaluation, to analyze its commercialization capabilities, and to draw con clusions. The method provides a graphical and formalized interpretation of the results, which is suitable for use when comparing investment projects, making decisions about incorporating technology into an entity's assets.
The study showed that in case of technology transfer from universities to the business environment, it is worthwhile to follow the suggested guidelines for applying the choice of the technology transfer option from the university to the business environment: 1) an option based on universitylicensed technology sales developed and protected by the property right; 2) an option based on the establishment of type "spin" companies by a university; 3) an option involving technology transfer in the form of startups; 4) an option based on the conclusion of a joint activity agreement with/without the creation of a legal en tity; and 5) an option of scientific and technical cooperation.
The choice of these options is proposed to be made on the basis of the matrix of the technology output to the market planning, based on the ratio of the consumer value level and technological readiness of technology. It indicates possible financing options in the case of choosing a particular technology transfer option, allows evaluating the conceptual strategy of market technology development (the blue oceans and red oceans strategies). The described provisions increase the validity of the assessment of technology transfer options.
These technology transfer options should be integrated into the modern university -authority -busi ness system. This will help to create a robust, innovative ecosystem, in which the university will take the right place, and the transfer of technologies developed in it will become a function of the efficiency of this ecosystem.

ACKNOWLEDGMENT
The study was partially supported by the Ministry of Education and Science of Ukraine within the framework of the TRANSFER state budget theme (Project "Evaluation of technology value and read