Technology transfer portals: A design model for supporting technology transfer via social software solutions

For staying competitive in times of shorter product life cycles, increasing technology complexity and rising efforts for technology development, inter- as well as intra-organizational technology transfer is once again gaining importance. In the past decade, the spreading of the Internet, faster Internet connections and more and more powerful web technologies - especially social software - paved a novel way for supporting technology transfer. Web-based technology transfer portals offer a great potential for supporting technology transfer, especially in its early phases by bringing together technology demand and offer. However, technology transfer portals must be designed carefully in order to meet future users´ needs and thus being successful in operation. In this paper a framework for designing these platforms according to specific transfer situations will be presented, taking into account the characteristics and goals of the portal operator and transfer partners as well as characteristics of the technologies to be transferred through the portal.