Technology transfer and communication: Lessons from Silicon Valley, Route 128, Carolina's Research Triangle and hi-tech Texas

Expenence from the 1980s has demonstrated that commonly used “automatic” and “dissemination/diffusion” models of technology transfer are inadequate to guide practice in the 1990s Technology transfer is an increasingly complex process, fraught with difficulties. Understanding technology transfer, and initiating actions to assist it to occur, is facilitated by conceptualising transfer as a communication process involving ongoing interaction and negotiation of meanings between researchers and clients Implications for practice of the adoption of a communica tion model of technology transfer are analysed, with particular attention being paid to the need for boundary spanning “go betweens”, or “linkage champions”, to manage the vital com munication aspects of technology transfer.