Introduction
This article is about applying the attention based view to university technology transfer to improve patent licensing performance. Since the passage of the Bayh Dole Act of 1980, universities have owned technological inventions afforded by federal research funding. There are still university technology transfer offices that struggle with increasing their licensing revenues. There is a persistent under performance by university technology transfer offices. For example, between 2005 and 2011, there was no substantial growth in licenses executed by university technology transfer offices. This paper makes the contribution of advocating the novel use of cognitive thinking’s attention based view to resolve this problem. 
The attention based view
The attention based view teaches that human attention is limited. Also, organizations are limited in what they pay attention to (Cyert, 1963; Ocasio, 1997). Arguably, universities may struggle with increasing their licensing revenues because they are not paying sufficient attention to licensing. Awareness of the problem is the first step in resolving it. It is propositioned that university technology transfer office staff pay more attention to intellectual property protection than patent marketing. They pay more attention to protection than licensing. This results in lower licensing revenues and lower overall performance.
IP protection vs. Marketing
If TTOs pay more attention to intellectual property protection than licensing, this would result in lower licensing revenues. The argument here is that the TTO staff will likely pay more attention to protecting the university’s intellectual property (i.e. primarily the patent portfolio). Further, they will likely pay more attention to maintaining intellectual property protection. This means they pay attention to making strategic decisions focused on providing intellectual property compliance training to faculty inventors and their graduate research students. They review and negotiate the intellectual property clauses in sponsored research program agreements. TTO staff work with outside patent counsel and faculty inventors on patent applications which are being prosecuted.
If TTOs pay more attention to intellectual property protection than patent marketing, this would result in lower licensing revenues. Before licensing takes place, there is patent marketing. Marketing and licensing comprises the university technology commercialization process. Further, I propose that university TTO staff are likely paying more attention to intellectual property protection than they are paying attention to marketing. A survey of 26 TTOs noted that 33% hired staff with either a MBA or PhD (Swamidass, 2009). About 71% of the TTOs that responded stated that they hire staff that have at least eight (8) years of technology transfer expertise (Swamidass, 2009).
Summary
As aforementioned, a 2005 study by Link and Siegel revealed that many faculty research communicated grave frustration with the inadequate business and marketing experience of the TTO staff (Link, 2007). TTO staff may lack business and marketing experience. We do not know whether the staff pays attention to in relation to their experience. Applying the attention based view, these propositions focus on what the TTO staff pays attention to. I proposition that TTO staff actually pay less attention to patent marketing and licensing than to intellectual property protection. These propositions will be tested by surveying TTO staff using, for example, psychological research constructs that are available for measuring attention.