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This paper aims to examine the degree to which individual technology transfer officers' heuristics and biases, as well as peer technology transfer institutions' practices, influence the technology commercialization decision‐making process.

A qualitative method was used to gather data from technology transfer officers (TTO) regarding how they make commercialization decisions. Responses were examined in the context of rational choice theory and institutional theory in an attempt to discern whether common decision‐making practices are shared among officers from different institutions.

The subjects shared relatively few common organizational and professional decision‐making practices. The sample was relatively evenly divided by TTO with an individual heuristic bias and those with a rational approach to decision making. Individual heuristics influenced all subjects to varying degrees.

The TTO plays a central role in the technology commercialization process yet the paper found little evidence that professional practice and standards were integrated into decision‐making processes. Further research examining why this is the case, and examining if there is a relationship to outcome success, is warranted.

Managers need to better understand and monitor how decisions are made within individual offices. Technology transfer directors should conduct a process audit to determine the extent decision‐making processes are internally or externally defined, and then implement best practice where appropriate.

Very few studies examine how TTO make commercialization decisions, and fewer examine this phenomenon in the context of both a rational choice and institutional theory framework.

Forming ties with prominent partners can help convey greater status and legitimacy to the company (Hallen, 2008) and also increases the entrepreneur’s influence within their own network (Bonacich, 1987). This allows entrepreneurs to gain greater access to the information, experience or resources that the company needs.

The founders of the company provided us with access to the inner workings of the company, their mentors and advisors and themselves. The authors used archival research and interviews when preparing this case. Interviews allow for the development of uncensored, real-life insights into the entrepreneur’s business experience. The authors also interviewed two of their mentors and investors.

Having graduated from UMass Lowell with engineering degrees, co-founders Rajia Abdelaziz and Ray Hamilton build invisaWear into a venture, but they did not know much about business. With coaching from their mentors, Rajia and Ray focused on building their network to raise capital to finance the business. Despite all their hard work networking, however, they faced a hurdle. Rajia and Ray contemplated their dilemma. “Are the authors doing something wrong? What can the authors do differently to attract investors?”

This case is suitable for an undergraduate course in business or entrepreneurship. This case is intended to illustrate to both business and non-business students how entrepreneurs can go about building their networks to grow their businesses. Presented as a real-life example of how entrepreneurs build their networks, the case can also be used to hone in on select topics including mentoring, searching for resources and coachability.

This study aims to explore the lived experience of vendors as they enact street vending practice that emerges as transformative entrepreneurship and service where they live and work.

This research qualitatively explores street vending in a multi-cultural, multi-local study to understand how these businesses operate to positively impact individual, collective and societal well-being.

This research reveals street vending is a creative, transformative entrepreneurial activity that improves individual and collective well-being. The research exposes multiple forms of habitual and transformative value delivered by vendors, resulting in improved eudaimonic and hedonic well-being that ripples out from vendors to families, communities and society.

A framework of street vending practice is provided to guide service designers and policymakers as they seek to support street vendors as they move from informal to formal and from survival to growth business modes.

This research extends existing conceptualizations of transformative entrepreneurship beyond prior focus on economic transformation and prior limitations of transformative entrepreneurship to business in growth modes.