Several formerly independent trends including the in creasing 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 trans fer 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...

Technology transfer has a long history, but only recently has it become the subject of study and action. The rapid rate of scientific and technical advance in both Europe and the United States and the existence of large technology gaps among nations has brought the importance of the process into sharper focus, and has c used technology transfer to have implications for countless aspects of both national and international develop ment. Technology transfer has been variously defined as: the process of information transfer between science, technology and actual utilization of scientific data and...