Abbas Mir, Seyed Ahmad Hashemi
Research findings play a significant role in promoting human life quality, developing level of welfare of society and international economic and social developments. However, the findings will not be important unless cannot be applied and are not marketed or available to applicants. Knowledge is driving force of knowledge-based development and has an increasing role in the growth of organizations and communities. Terms such as learner organization or in larger scale, learner society and learner nation are used to provide an illustration of organizations and societies with the greatest use of knowledge in its full cycle. Commercializing research achievements of universities is a complex and complementary activity and the chain of transforming idea into technology which leads to wealth creation, entrepreneurship and financial autonomy of universities. The purpose of present study was to determine and explain effective knowledge commercialization factors of commercializing research results and explaining relationships between these factors. This descriptive study is from survey type. The used method of present study was combined research method (quantitative and qualitative) and its statistical population included senior managers, research and technology directors, faculty members of the technical and professional university, senior managers and research and technology directors contract organizations with this university and experts related to this topic.Purposeful sampling method was used to select sample in qualitative section and sample of quantitative section was selected using stratified random sampling method. Data gathering tools included Semi-structured interview and author-made questionnaire. Content validity and viewpoints of six experts in this field were used to determine the reliability of measurement tool. Reliability of the questionnaire was obtained equal to 0.8541 using Cranach's alpha. Data from interviews were clustered and analyzed through coding and statistical tests such as T-test, Friedman were used to analyze quantitative data.The obtained results indicated the effect of knowledge commercialization factors including government forces, economic forces, educational system, macro laws and regulations, technological advancements, competitors and competitiveness, customer orientation and other issues on commercializing research results.