Focused or divided? Collaborative attention and technological orientations in technology transfer

Research and development (R&D) collaborations are assumed to be important means by which research institute facilitate technology transfers. However, differences in how organizations allocate their attention to their R&D partners coupled with the depth and breadth of their technological knowledge may may yield different technology transfer performances. We applies the knowledge-based view (KBV) and the attention-based view (ABV) to theorize the effects of focused and divided collaborative attention on research institutes’ technology transfer performance under different technological orientations (i.e., technological breadth and depth).We test several hypotheses relating to these arguments using patents filed by the research institutes of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS). Our analysis indicates that focusing one’s attention on a few different partners results in more transfers for both low-breadth/high-depth and low-breadth/low-depth research institutes, while dividing one’s attention equally between a range of different collaborators is better for high-breadth/low-depth research institutes. No significant difference in impact was found between the two kinds of collaborative attention for high-breadth/high-depth research institutes. Our findings have managerial implications for how research institutes can effectively allocate collaborative attention to more successfully transfer their technologies.