Relevance and importance

The global economy has seen structural changes over the past decades; markets and industries are far more volatile than before. Technological innovation has exploded leading to a proliferation of new goods and services and emerging firms and industries are challenging the old ones. SMEs have chances to be more flexible and rapid both in acquiring and implementing new technological solutions and products and developing their own new solutions for technology transfer. Too many SMEs limit their business concept to, for example, "producing and selling a chair" and ignore opportunities to make higher profit by selling the innovative design and technology "how to make a better chair".

The development and commercialisation of advanced technology offers two main benefits:

	Maintain and expand competitiveness and to an extent mitigate the effects of instability and uncertainty driven by globalisation
	Gain higher added-value per worker, resulting in higher personal income. This in turn leads to the attraction of the necessary human talent to enable companies and regions to achieve further success in technology development and commercialisation; in other words a virtuous circle.

The SME can take advantage of these opportunities.

Overview

Technology transfer activities

	Cooperative Research and Development - the SME collaborates with outside technology organisations, for example other firms, university, government laboratories.
	Licensing or sale of intellectual property - owner of technology transfers some intellectual property to external business for certain benefits, e.g. financial. The SME founds a new company to exploit intellectual property under licence from the technology owner.
	Technical assistance - business uses an outside organisation to provide expertise or facilities to solve a well defined/narrow technology problem.
	Information exchanges - the SME obtains access to existing information through exchanges, for example through markets, professional networks, conferences, government agencies.

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Recommendations and practical tips

An SME could assess its capability for technology transfer in four fields:

1. Have we clearly described technology transfer and networking needs of the enterprise?
2. Do we have entrepreneurship capabilities and market focus for catching technology transfer opportunites?
3. Do we have innovative capabilities for managing ideas and changes in the technology transfer process?
4. Do we have capabilities for knowledge sharing, networking and learning?

Typically the process of learning from external sources is not dramatic and huge, but rather incremental and often small-scale. It requires ongoing effort! The learning process is not one of simply obtaining information but involves obtaining factual information and transforming it into useable knowledge. The receiver of the information must be able to transform it into internally usable knowledge which often requires personal experience of having done this in the past. Personal interaction with the holder of the knowledge can speed up the process, particularly at the early stages.

Warnings and potential pitfalls

In order to benefit from technology transfer check to what extent your company has the following "ability to learn components":

	Motivation and willingness to learn from external sources.
	Self-assesment readiness for clarifying strong and weak sides of capabilities for technology transfer.
	The level of effort devoted to learning.
	The willingness to "unlearn" established procedures and taken for granted knowledge.
	Absorption Capacity- the ability to learn, assimilate and use knowledge developed elsewhere.
	Internal technical expertise.
	Access to and utilisation of networks.

Remember! Small firms often have advantages over larger organisations, and you should improve technology transfer with each experience!

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