TECHNOLOGY TRANSFER: STRATEGY, MANAGEMENT, PROCESS AND INHIBITING FACTORS. A STUDY RELATING TO THE TECHNOLOGY TRANSFER OF INTELLIGENT SYSTEMS

Abstract

Organisational growth, as well as survival, is becoming more dependent on innovation, yet no company or organisation can hope to have all its required technology to be developed in-house. Thus, at some stage, it will be necessary to import technology. In the development of corporate strategy, it is considered essential that there should be a subset strategy relating to technology or R&D which differentiates in-house technological capability and availability, and technology which must be imported. Technology transfer is, more often than not, a complex process and requires cooperation at a number of organisational levels. A lack of understanding of the processes of technology transfer leads to numerous problems and in some cases, disaster, with large amounts of money spent and little to show for it. It is imperative, therefore, that a well-planned and executed programme is developed to avoid many of the possible pitfalls, a number of which are described later in this paper. It is very difficult to arrive at one model for technology transfer because each technology has different elements. However, the results of some recent research suggest that there are some basic rules that do apply across the board and if these are followed, then successful outcome of the transfer is high.