When the marketplace comes to the research laboratory: technology transfer efficiency of innovation-driven publicly funded research centers

University technology transfer has garnered significant attention in the fields of innovation and entrepreneurship. Most research has focused on the overall performance of entire universities or their technology transfer offices. This study aims instead to contribute to the literature by evaluating performance and its determinants at the level of individual research centers. By promoting continuous engagement between researchers and external stakeholders these centers facilitate the co-creation of projects with a translational impact. Despite being critical channels for advancing publicly funded technology transfer, research centers have received limited attention in previous studies. To address this gap, we examine the technology transfer efficiency (TTE) of 46 innovation-driven university research centers funded by the Australian Research Council from 2013 to 2021. Combining traditional data envelopment analysis with fuzzy set qualitative comparative analysis, we assess these centers’ TTE and identify configurations for high and low TTE outcomes. Our findings reveal respectable performance levels across most research centers; however, significant inefficiencies are related to Master’s and PhD students, and collaborations with external stakeholders. We outline three configurations leading to high TTE, and five configurations for low TTE. Notably, our results highlight the pivotal role of female directors in technology transfer leadership, which significantly contributes to high TTE. Additionally, inefficiencies arise when engaging with multiple external stakeholders and in the utilization of research students and postdoctoral researchers as factors in configurations linked to low TTE. These results highlight the complex causality underlying the technology transfer process and provide implications for research policy and the functioning of research centers.