Superfilling technology: transferring knowledge to industry from the National Institute of Standards and Technology

In the mid-1990s, the semiconductor industry manufactured devices with critical circuit dimensions of between 0.35 and 0.25 μ, and it used aluminum or an aluminum copper alloy to interconnect device components. However, the critical dimension needed to be reduced so that devices could become faster and more efficient. At circuits dimensions of 0.18 μ or less, aluminum no longer conducts electricity well enough to maintain the circuit’s efficiency; thus, the industry determined that copper—a superior conducting material—would be needed to help the industry produce smaller and faster semiconductor devices. Still, technical barriers existed, preventing a seamless transition from aluminum to copper. Thus, in the 1990s, the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) began focused research on superfilling aimed at assisting the semiconductor industry during this period. In this paper, we document the net economic benefits (private and social) accruing from NIST’s core research investments in superfilling during the late 1990s and early 2000s. Using traditional evaluation methodology and metrics, we calculated economic impact estimates, and the results suggest that NIST’s public resources were, from a social perspective, used efficiently.     

Technology transfer to the hardwood industry: Testing new strategies

The National Agricultural Library and the Extension Service, US Department of Agriculture, are collaborating on a technology-transfer strategy with the hardwood industry. The strategy is based on the premises that 1) industry associations can serve as vehicles for identifying industry-wide needs, 2) non-traditional research bases are fertile sources of alternative technologies, 3) technology agents can uncover existing technologies and evaluate the feasibility of commercializing them, and 4) state-of-the-art reports and promotion of new cost-saving technologies provide industry with new products and new processes. He has been a program director for Public Technology, Inc. and the executive director of the Federal Laboratory Consortium for Technology Transfer. Dr. Maher is the current president of the Technology Transfer Society's Washington, DC, Chapter.     

The nexus between science and industry: evidence from faculty inventions

Knowledge transfer from science to industry has been shown to be beneficial for the corporate partner. In order to get a better understanding of the reasons behind these positive effects, this study focuses on the junction of science and industry by comparing characteristics of academic inventions that are transferred to industry and those staying in the public sector. Academic inventions are identified via patent applications of German academic scientists. We find that academic patents assigned to corporations are more likely to enable firms reaping short term rather than, possibly more uncertain, long-run returns, in contrast to patents that stay in the public sector. Firms also strive for academic inventions with a high blocking potential in technology markets. Academic patents issued to corporations appear to reflect less complex inventions as compared to inventions that are patented by the public science sector.     

The transfer of public science to patented technology: A case study in agricultural science

One of the most difficult challenges in technology transfer is to measure the movement of knowledge from basic scientific research to industrial technology. This paper will report on a study of the linkage between science supported by the Agricultural Research Service (ARS) and patented technology. This study traced the citations from U.S. patents issued in 1987–88 and 1993–94 to scientific research papers linked to the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA). The number of patent citations to ARS papers, and to other USDA-supported papers has increased fourfold over the six-year period. A distinct difference also exists between the patent-cited ARS papers and patent-cited extramural USDA-supported papers: ARS papers are in more agriculturally related journals, while the extramural papers were in more basic and biomedical journals. USDA-supported papers were overwhelmingly cited by U.S.-invented patents (in a patent system in which half the patents are foreign-invented). In the primary field of ARS papers (Biology), they are cited much more often by patents than Biology papers from any other publishing organization. Since the publishing organizations and support sources of all the papers cited in these patents have now been identified, we can study the transfer of scientific results to patented technology by institution, by agency, or by any other category of patent or paper holder. The authors thank the Agricultural Research Service of the U.S. Department of Agricultural, especially Dr. Richard Parry, for this paper' use of the study performed for them by CHI Research, Inc. (Grant number 59-0790-6-054)     

Factors affecting the transfer of technology from industry/university cooperatives to sponsoring companies

This paper illuminates the technology-transfer process by identifying the factors affecting the implementation decisions of sponsor companies with regard to eight projects conducted at two industry/university cooperative-research centers. Telephone interviews with corporate-sponsor representatives provided the data. The factors reported most often as influential in the decision of whether or not to use research results were relevance of the project, researcher's ability to demonstrate the usefulness of the results, and the quality of communication with the researcher. When results were not used, lack of company support and lack of communication within the company also appeared to be influential. The end result of these analyses is a model depicting the factors that affect the implementation decision.     

Inter-organisational technology/knowledge transfer: a framework from critical literature review

This paper aims to provide, through a literature analysis, a solid theoretical foundation that allows identifying the critical factors for technology/knowledge transfer. The literature review allowed to summarize the main contributions collected, to identify the main critical factors for technology/knowledge transfer and to frame them in a simple framework, carrying out a rationalization and classification. We built a reference framework, called “model of technology/knowledge transfer”. The proposed structure considers six categories related to the actors involved (sources, recipients and intermediaries), the relationship between them, the object of the transfer, the channels and mechanisms and the reference context. The factors represent all the main parameters and levers to consider in the design and implementation of an activity of technology/knowledge transfer. This can direct also future research by deepening these factors or the relationship among them.     

Technology transfer in the construction industry

The Journal of Technology Transfer - The demand for affordable, high-quality homes and premises has increased as society has evolved. Construction companies have shown that an industrialised...     

Technology transfer in the petroleum industry

The energy industry, especially the petroleum, is critically important to today's society. This industry has historically been accused of being a “good old boy” network that is extremely reluctant and slow to accept technology and change. A closer analysis of the industry shows that it is highly fragmented consisting mostly of firms who operate in only a limited number of functional areas. The analysis also shows that there are many critical current and future problems which could be addressed with technology from any diverse disciplines and industries. Case analyses of existing technology flow through to successful utilization by the petroleum industry describes the technology transfer process and the role played by the different firms inside and outside the industry.     

Technology transfer into capital-intensive industry: I. The paper industry by the year 2000

Traditionally, new technology has been slow to enter the paper industry, which turns over its capital stock in about 40 years. In this paper, we will examine some of the reasons for this long transition period and the implications of such a transition period for government policy. If the turnover time could be cut in half, the potential energy savings could be 4 quadrillion Btu (Quads) in 20 years. Examples of new technologies that will become prominent throughout the paper industry by the year 2000 include vapor recompression evaporation, oxygen bleaching, twin-wire forming and extended nip pressing. We present explicit projections of production shares (based on a computer model) for selected new technologies. New technology blends into an industry over a period of years. This paper examines some of the factors that accelerate or retard this transition in the capital-intensive (“heavy”) industries. For purposes of this article, our example is the paper industry, and so the examples of new innovations are drawn from pulp and paper-making processes. (Incidentally, we use the term “paper” throughout as a shorthand for SIC 26, Pulp, Paper and Paperboard.) The examination of paper-industry technology reported here is based to a great extent on a study of industrial energy use [1] conducted by the Office of Technology Assessment (OTA) for the U.S. Congress. The OTA study examined the four most energy-intensive American industries (paper, steel, chemicals and petroleum refining), to identify technologies to improve energy efficiency, to project industrial energy use in each industry between now and the end of the century, and to assess the impact of various policies on energy use and energy efficiency. The study found remarkable similarities between the four industries. One notable commonality is the attitude of management towards introduction of new technology.     

Determinants of knowledge transfer: evidence from Canadian university researchers in natural sciences and engineering

This paper addresses three questions: First, what is the extent of research transfer in natural sciences and engineering among Canadian university researchers? Second, are there differences between various disciplines with regard to the extent of this transfer? And third, what are the determinants of research transfer? To answer these questions, the paper begins by differentiating between technology transfer and knowledge transfer. It then identifies the individual researcher as the unit of analysis of this study and introduces a conceptual framework derived from the resource-based approach of firms. The paper then reviews the literature on each of the factors included in the conceptual framework, beginning with the dependent variable, knowledge transfer. The conceptual framework includes four categories of resources and one category of research attributes that are likely to influence knowledge transfer. Based on a survey of 1,554 researchers funded by the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC), comparisons of means of research transfer across research fields were conducted. Multivariate regression analyses were used to identify the determinants of research transfer by research field. The results of these analyses indicate that researchers transferred knowledge much more actively when no commercialization was involved than when there was commercialization of protected intellectual property. This paper thus adds to the relatively scarce evidence about knowledge transfer by examining knowledge transfer from a broader perspective than strict commercialization. The findings of this paper are also interesting for other reasons. We obtained statistical evidence indicating that researchers in certain research fields were much more active in knowledge transfer than those in other fields, thereby pointing to differences in levels of knowledge activities across research fields. Furthermore, we obtained evidence showing that only two determinants explained knowledge transfer in all the six research fields considered in this study, namely, focus of research projects on users’ needs, and linkages between researchers and research users. Statistical evidence obtained indicates that the other determinants that influence knowledge transfer vary from one research field to another, thus suggesting that different policies would be required to increase knowledge transfer in different research fields. The last part of the paper outlines the implications of the regression results for theory building, public policy and future research.     

Technology transfer to a major manufacturing industry: Case study of a state's approach

The paper presents the state of Alabama's approach to the transfer of technology to the apparel-manufacturing industry. The technology-transfer program has been under way for three years. This paper summarizes the highlights of the program, the approach to transferring technology, and the lessons learned.     

The money blind: how to stop industry bias in biomedical science, without violating the First Amendment

The pharmaceutical and medical device industries use billions of dollars to support the biomedical science that physicians, regulators, and patients use to make healthcare decisions--the decisions that drive an increasingly large portion of the American economy. Compelling evidence suggests that this industry money buys favorable results, biasing the outcomes of scientific research. Current efforts to manage the problem, including disclosure mandates and peer reviews, are ineffective. A blinding mechanism, operating through an intermediary such as the National Institutes of Health, could instead be developed to allow industry support of science without allowing undue influence. If the editors of biomedical journals fail to mandate that industry funders utilize such a solution, the federal government has several regulatory levers available, including conditioning federal funding and direct regulation, both of which could be done without violating the First Amendment.     

Global knowledge intensive enterprises and international technology transfer: emerging perspectives from a quadruple helix environment

Management scholars have widely acknowledged that we live a new era of economic development, the so-called knowledge economy, where knowledge appears to be the key foundation of value creation. During the recent years, it seems like knowledge has become an all-embracing term that has come to stand for all the magic that goes on within contemporary organizations, making them successful. Knowledge is then an immaterial and ubiquitous asset, embodied into individuals and embedded in their routines and artefacts. From this shadowy asset arises the main research purpose of several management scholars: to ascertain the underlying organizational alchemy and the mystery of knowledge. In the managerial literature, when knowledge comes so deeply incorporated within a firm this has been usually reflected in a widely used concept: the knowledge-intensive enterprise, a term that has received significant attention from scholars and researchers, now expressing a category of organizations within academic scientific research. Likewise, a growing debate is emerging among policy makers and scholars in technology transfer processes and tools for KIEs worldwide.     

Beyond formal university technology transfer: innovative pathways for knowledge exchange

The Journal of Technology Transfer - University technology transfer is often associated with formal transmission of science-based inventions, for instance through the licensing of patented...     

Knowledge flows between universities and industry: the impact of distance,technological compatibility,and the ability to diffuse knowledge

The Journal of Technology Transfer - This paper uses citations to university-issued patents to investigate the knowledge flow from 91 US research universities to businesses assigned to...     

Correction to: Against Philosophical Anarchism

Law and Philosophy - In the original publication of the article, the corresponding author name was published incorrectly as “And Fabian Wendt”. The correct author name is “Fabian...     

The activities of university knowledge transfer offices: towards the third mission in Italy

Establishing deeper engagement with industry and society has recently become a key concern of universities. To pursue this goal, universities—as well as other public research organizations—have started to reorganize internal resources, to redefine their activities and policies, and to redesign their overall knowledge transfer (KT) business models. As a consequence, in several countries a wide heterogeneity exists in the types of KT models adopted and in the outcomes arising from KT activities. By performing a cluster analysis and a multinomial logit regression on an extensive dataset that almost covers the entire population of Italian universities, in this study we analyze (1) whether models of KT characterized by a broader engagement with society are gradually substituting models more focused on technology commercialization, and (2) which factors related to the availability of resources and universities’ strategic intention better explain existing differences. Insights from the study might help university managers to define the most appropriate actions to fully undertake the implementation of the university third mission.     

Entrepreneurship research centers around the world: research orientation,knowledge transfer and performance

This work investigates entrepreneurship research centers, and analyzes their research performance. Studies on the determinants of performance of research centers have mainly focused on science and technology, while entrepreneurship has been so far neglected. Through an analysis of 46 centers worldwide, we focus on entrepreneurship research and the role of centers, by discussing how knowledge transfer mechanisms and research orientation affect research performance. Our findings contribute to shed light on the divergence of methodologies and approaches characterizing entrepreneurship research; they also corroborate the view that centers enable a “compound Matthew-effect”, according to which knowledge transfer to external stakeholders, after controlling for research orientation of the center, does foster and enrich research performance.