Technology transfer is the key engine to promote the development of new quality productive forces, but the current academic discussion on the relationship between the two is still lacking of empirical evidence and regional spatial perspective. As the main carrier of technology transfer, patents, based on the protection role of intellectual property system, make technology elements realize their market value and turn into real productivity, and promote regional innovation to high-quality development. It is of great theoretical and practical significance to explore the specific influence and development path of technology transfer in colleges and universities, which is an important innovation subject and technology source, on regional new quality productive forces. This paper defined the connotations and extensions of regional new quality productive forces, and systematically analyzed the impact of university technology transfer on the development of regional new quality productive forces using university patent assignment data from 2012 to 2022 in China, employing a two-way fixed effects model. The findings of the study are as follows: (1) The regional flow of technology elements embedded in university patents demonstrates significant spatial polarization in China, exhibiting a "Matthew Effect" shaped by disparities in resource endowments and uneven distributions of economic and intellectual resources. (2) As a key pathway for driving the development of regional new quality productive forces, the role of university technology transfer exhibits notable regional heterogeneity, which is further moderated by the breadth of technology transfer and the absorptive capacity of regional enterprises. (3) The heterogeneity analysis further identified significant variations in technology transfer effectiveness across different innovation models and industrial sectors. This study has further enriched the theory and conceptual system of new quality productive forces, revealed the theoretical relationship between university technology transfer and regional development of new quality productive forces, and it will provide a reference for national and local policies.