Technology transfer and transformation, the core link bridging sci-tech innovation and industrial application, is undergoing profound changes amid high-quality development. This paper traces its evolutionary trajectory, reveals its development logic, and identifies future core directions and implementation pathways, offering theoretical and practical guidance for the industry to support sci-tech innovation and high-quality economic development. Using systematic review and dimensional decomposition, it retraces the evolution from the 1.0 to the 4.0 model, uncovering a logic from government-led to market-driven and intelligent collaboration. It analyzes pathways focusing on tools, capabilities, and resources, integrating innovation methods and digital technologies like AI and big data. By clarifying the characteristics and patterns of the four stages, the paper concludes that the future will center on precise matching and intelligent decision-making, thereby realizing intelligent, full-chain, and ecosystem-based collaboration. It elucidates that building a data-driven, multi-stakeholder collaborative ecosystem is an inevitable choice for the industry’s development.