Assistive Technology Transfer Update

For technology transfer to mature as a business discipline, practitioners need to develop conceptual models that can be tested in practice. In the absence of quantitative date, such models derive from experiential case examples aggregated to discern patterns. Dr. Gary Lundquist, President of Market Engineering International, states that technology is transferred to solve problems and create wealth for all involved. To be successful, participations must recognize that this complex process requires a "rich vision" that fulfills all of the interests in a position to influence the transfer's outcome. His concept of Technology Value Management is based on three Concepts and seven Principles:

The three Concepts are:

• Technology concept - the ability to produce a functional design that meets specific performance criteria.
• Ownership concept - the ability to apply a technology at a particular level of performance.
• Transfer concept - the ability to demonstrate a technology's performance against agreed requirements.

The seven Principles are:

• Wins - successful transfers benefit all parties.
• Agents - people with science/engineering expertise combined with strategic marketing perspectives are Agents of Change.
• Chains - the movement of technologies through the transfer process to become products creates a value-chain.
• Timing - a confluence of factors including ownership, readiness, communication, agreement, opportunity and trust.
• Vision - perceiving that a set of capabilities have an identity and potential market impact.
• Proofs - justifying the transfer to each of the stakeholders and their respective interests.
• Movement - satisfying market needs of customers, at a profit, over time in a competitive environment

Dr. Lundquist argues that the three Concepts and seven Principles can be operationalized as ten variables, with each assigned a scale for scoring compliance. Plotting the ten scores in a pie chart creates a spider diagram graphically indicating where a technology transfer process is strong or weak. Conceptually structuring and quantifying the technology transfer process is the next step in developing the practice of technology transfer into a discipline.

[ Top of Page ]