Metrics for analysis of technological maturity of academic spin-offs through technology readiness levels

This work aimed to develop a framework for assessing the technological maturity of companies that are born from research groups of educational institutions or research centers. These companies, commonly called academic spin-offs, usually start their activities after participating in incubation processes performed by academic incubators, where they learn to direct their efforts to business maturity, disregarding the technological maturity required for the development of their final product. The assessment framework created analyzes and classifies the technological maturity of these companies from four different approaches of analysis, namely: TRL Calculator work-based approach, approach based on NBR 16290:2015, Weighted calculation approach and Percentage of levels approach, these last two proposals being developed by the authors. The analyzed sample is composed of three academic spin-offs of the Biotechnology sector incubated by INCUBAUECE. The results indicated that the companies have high levels of technological maturity, in addition to indicating which activities the companies had greater difficulty in performing and, finally, the instrument used proved an excellent guide for the technological development of these companies.