Editors' Introduction

When Comparative Technology Transfer and Society was established four years ago, the editors envisioned publishing an interdisciplinary academic journal that linked technology transfer practitioners and scholars in disparate academic fields. We also proposed to address certain cross-cutting policy issues that exemplify the global and comparative impact of technology transfer issues.

This symposium on "Water Issues" is our first full effort in this direction. Edited by geologist Thomas P. Huber, it contains articles on water allocation and distribution issues throughout the world, including Central America, Southeast Asia, Africa, and the former Soviet Union. The diffusion of technology is front and center in these articles, as all of the authors consider the movement of knowledge and expertise about organizational strategies, management, and technical challenges across a variety of boundaries.

Given this journal's institutional home at the University of Colorado at Colorado Springs, these water issues also have great local significance. As Tom Huber notes in his symposium introduction, water issues are at the heart of economic, political, and environmental discourse throughout the American West. Because water is a finite resource with multiple users (including but not limited to agriculture, industry, recreation, and urban development), Colorado residents face constant questions about the relative priority assigned to different users, the process to be used in making resource allocation decisions, and the historical and legal basis on which competing claims are grounded.

For a journal managed by the Colorado Institute for Technology Transfer Implementation (CITTI) and supported by El Pomar Foundation, we consider this symposium to be particularly timely and relevant. By applying global lessons to local technology transfer issues, we are fulfilling the mission of both the Foundation and the University of Colorado at Colorado Springs to be a relevant force for civic engagement and economic development throughout Colorado.