Research abstract

Several formerly independent trends including the increasing rate of technological change, the demand for greater efficiency and productivity in R&D and innovation, and the need for applying technology to the solution of pressing social and economic problems have recently begun to reinforce each other resulting in renewed interest in technology transfer activities and research. The proliferation of research efforts in the U.S. and Western Europe, increased corporate and governmental efforts to develop mechanisms and incentives for transfer and the growing closeness between transfer and innovation studies led to the decision to convene a meeting with representatives from both research and practice in transfer and innovation in order to establish a “state-of-the-art” baseline and to promote discussion between the researchers and practioners from all sectors in the hope that new research will better reflect the realities of current practice and new mechanisms created by practitioners might be improved through the use of knowledge generated from research.