Managing Technology Transfer:An Analysis of Intrinsic Factors

The role of technology transfer in the economic development of a country has long been established. It has been observed that the per-capita incomes of countries vary due to barriers in technology adoption. Various authors have identified barriers to technology transfer and the reasons for success and failures in transfer of technology. The emphasis of the existing literature is on extrinsic factors like technology, market, finance, government, environment, culture, society which depend on third parties and is beyond the scope and capabilities of transferor and transferee. But the existing literature is almost silent on the intrinsic or fundamental gaps and perceptions that exist between the transferor and transferee. As it was observed that the identification of barriers was focused on their extrinsic nature, a review of existing literature was done to identify the barriers that could be intrinsic in nature. The need for more emphasis on intrinsic factors like goal compatibility, perceptional differences about technology and transfer, environmental differences as well as cultural differences, learning and unlearning, building capabilities, mastering change management, networking, etc., for making the technology transfer successful has been discussed in this paper. The objective of the paper is to shift focus from apparent extrinsic symptoms to intrinsic causes in order to derive economic success from technology transfer.