The journey of a researcher or entrepreneur's good idea to a viable and scalable technology which can be commercialised can be helped along by a strong technology transfer office. Nazeem Mustapha, Firdous Khan and Gerard Ralphs reflect on how is South Africa faring when it comes to building this capacity within its publicly-financed research institutions. Technology transfer is big business in leading university towns around the world.
Human Sciences Research Council (2026) studied this question.