In This Issue

To the editors of this journal, immobile technology is rather dull. To be exciting, technology must move, flow, grow, expand, cross borders, achieve markets, and impact lives and cultures: transfer. An understanding of the technology itself is no doubt very crucial. We have a plethora of university curricula, academic journals, and popular magazines dedicated to the technology itself. But even these speak to the desire of transfer. What purpose are these outlets if not to transfer the knowledge of the technology from one body to another, to inspire improvements by involving diverse and creative thought, to move the technology into markets that value innovation and productivity? Still, technology receives a great deal of public attention, while transfer mechanisms and motivations are left in relative obscurity. In this, our eighth issue of Comparative Technology Transfer and Society, we continue to explore the movement of technology from a variety of discipline perspectives. Perhaps more significantly, our authors present analyses and issues at organizational, individual, and global levels, highlighting our early editorial premise that transfer of technology must be examined at all levels of human aggregation to achieve the excitement of moving technology from initial concept to full potential.

Timothy L. Faley and Michael Sharer examine how an academic organization makes decisions regarding transfer issues. They focus on clarifying the mission of a university in terms of the transfer and dissemination of funded research. Unique to this piece is the application of the Reservoir Theory of New Knowledge and New Growth Theory to derive a descriptive step model of how universities create and disseminate knowledge using a method best suited to match their mission. Funding of basic research creates reservoirs of knowledge that serve to improve competitiveness, create jobs, and foster new industry. The state of technology is impacted by the funds heading into the research projects that make their way out to the marketplace through transfer mechanisms. The Bayh–Dole Act is a major facilitator of these transfers, but does not necessarily reflect the best course of action for a university in every circumstance. Societal benefits must be weighed against financial gain for the university making decisions about release of innovation through publication or patents and licenses. The importance of understanding the technology, markets, and audiences for the technology come clearly to the fore, with a discussion of how the multiple steps must be managed to optimize the benefits from technology transfer. Peter P. Radecki and James R. Baker provide Notes from the Field to discuss how certain parameters of the model developed by Faley and Sharer are employed successfully by Michigan Technological University. These companion pieces provide clear thought on issues universities face, yet show the diversity of mechanisms that may be employed in the process.

Whereas Faley and Sharer concentrate on organizational-level issues, I-Chiu Chang, Edward T. Chen, Ming-Shien Chiang, and James J. Jiang take the concerns of the organization down to the individual level, to examine why certain technology is accepted by those who must utilize the innovation to achieve desired success. The authors seek explanations for the acceptance of expert systems by a user community, acceptance necessary to successfully transfer the information system technology into practice. The analysis is broken into two components: the acceptance of the expert system technology for use, and the use of the output provided by the system. Both conditions must be met for transfer to successfully occur in this case. Each condition is tested with separate models from disparate fields. System use is tested with a technology acceptance model that defines when a system will be accepted by users in a given domain. Persuasion to accept the advice provided as output from an expert system is modeled as a psychological process that depends on an individual's self-confidence, confidence in the system, and discrepancy between the individual's position and the assertion of the system. The individual's behavior can be influenced through the manipulation of identifiable factors, yielding a greater chance of successful transfer from design into practice. The psychological components of this piece, along with the more common view of this problem through an information systems research lens, provide a unique...