HRMARS - University patent commercialization helps convert research outputs into market value. It also creates legal uncertainty. Common issues include contract validity, ownership boundaries, infringement liability, and information disclosure. In practice, two management biases often appear. First, universities replace risk management with more rules and more approval steps. Management becomes more compliance-focused. This can create over-control in low-risk areas and reduce efficiency. Second, resources are allocated by experience rather than systematic identification and assessment. This can leave high-risk areas under-managed and result in fragmented inputs. Because of these biases, mismatches between risk level and management input are difficult to detect and correct. A simple and usable diagnostic method is therefore needed. It should measure risk level and management adequacy in parallel and produce a clear basis for prioritization. This paper asks how risk management mismatch in university patent commercialization can be identified and translated into a simplified and comparable set of management priorities. It uses the risk management cycle as a process framework and applies contingency theory to support a context and mechanism fit logic. It proposes a 3×3 risk management matching framework. The framework measures legal risk level and current management adequacy in parallel. It then maps them into a 3×3 risk matrix to locate mismatch zones, such as high risk with low management and low risk with high management. The framework provides a direct measurement and diagnostic tool for fit-based management in universities. It shifts attention from whether rules exist to whether management is aligned with risk. It also shifts the focus from static system description to mismatch diagnosis and improvement path identification.
MingZhang et al. (Sun,) studied this question.