Abstract:
"Innovate or die" is a long-standing creed in industry. Collaboration between
companies is one route that businesses are pursuing with vigour, in an
effort to gain competitive advantage.
Few UK companies look to the dedicated research institutes (DRDCs) that
exist as a source of innovation and industrial collaboration. This is despite
the high regard bestowed on the creative abilities of the scientific teams at
these centres of excellence. The purpose of this study is not to answer why
this is so, but to help improve the chances of success when it occurs.
The study was born out of a Government-funded LINK project, which
evaluated the benefits, to project commercialisation, of conducting market
research in tandem with the technical stages of R&D at public research
institutes. Exposure to the professional cultures, work ethos and personal
attitudes of team-members at the DRDCs and their commercial partners
alerted the researcher to the challenges presented by technology transfer
between such organisations.
The literature is populated by studies that detail the stresses and strains of
technology transfer. However, little attention has been directed exclusively
at cases involving DRDCs. The primary aim of the study is to identify the
driving forces behind technology transfer success from DRDCs to industry.
It draws on the framework of the IMP Group to structure the context of
investigation. It uses the findings of past studies to structure the content of
investigation.
A qualitative approach involving 13 detailed case studies constitutes its
methodology. The cases cover both public and privately-funded DRDCs in
the UK and the Netherlands, including examples from agricultural
engineering, food sciences and biotechnology.
The results highlight seven key antecedents as areas at which good
management practice should be targeted. The study concludes by
addressing the underlying mechanisms behind transfer process success. It
finds that it is too simplistic to focus on any one of the three dimensions of
technology transfer (organisational, human and environmental) 'at the
exclusion of the others, as past studies have done. Successful transfer is
found to depend on three cross-dimensional underlying mechanisms:-
• checking the innovation is appropriate to the recipient
• establishing a suitable transfer process
• and providing an effective conduit for routing the knowledge
transfer.
