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Technology transfer offices (TTOs) in research-driven universities serve as an intermediary between suppliers of innovations and those who can potentially commercialise them. In the United Arab Emirates (UAE), TTOs are expected to take an important role in the evolution of successful spin-off companies from innovation to production to sales to sustainable profit. TTOs aim to help businesses to innovate and prosper leading to improving local and national economic prosperity. TTOs often support spin-off companies becoming a learning organisation and easing into an articulated management of activities complementary to the research and development activities that create the innovation and drive the transition from innovation to product lines. This paper aims to investigate the current situation of research-driven university's TTO in UAE using a case study of Etisalat BT Innovation Center at Khalifa University and Masdar Institute for university policy implications. The findings suggest that TTOs assist university researchers in many ways. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper sought to analyse the dynamics underlying university technology transfer and commercialisation mechanisms. We adopt a qualitative research methodology, which incorporates different case studies, interviews and applied research of the actors involved in universities, business incubators and start-ups. While limited to three case studies, this paper does highlight the technology transfer mechanisms and the support provided to commercialisation, including the identification of the difficulties and opportunities present within the context of cooperation networks. By surveying those running incubators and incubator company managers in conjunction with analysis of research, development and innovation (RDI) cooperative projects backed by European funding, we were able to gain insights into the different processes of transferring and commercialising technology. Falling within the framework of the third component of universities' mission, this article demonstrates not only the importance of RDI cooperation networks but also how the consequent commercialisation of new products and services generates positive consequences for economic growth. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

SME innovation strategy and motivation has become one of the most challenging subjects of innovation policy. New innovation models proposed recently have captured the attention of policy makers. However, these models seem for the most part to be applicable to medium-sized or large enterprises. The objective of this paper is to analyse the open innovation model in the case of outsourced cooperative R&D in SMEs. Although the driving forces for outsourcing innovation in SMEs are in some respects similar to those for large firms, others are linked to lack of resources, but both have in common the pursuit of efficiency in R&D and technology transfer. This paper is based on an empirical study of open innovation in SMEs and proposes a model for analysing the critical elements which influence performance and strategic alignment between R&D performers and their partners (in most cases, SMEs). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article compares sectoral systems of innovation (SSI) related to software in the selected Asian countries: China, India, Japan, Korea, Singapore and Taiwan, focusing on outputs of scientific research for years 2002-2006 and using tech mining research method. The paper characterises the relative importance of specific domains of applied software research in every country and measures the responsiveness of researchers to emerging technologies. The analysis helps identify potential inefficiencies and strategic threats in the software sectors of the concerned countries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

R&D networks have been studied and promoted by scholars and policy makers as a way to increase the performance of innovation systems. At the same time, limited attention has been devoted to evaluate their performances. This paper reviews the literature that studied R&D networks from different approaches and suggests a framework to help developing evaluation systems for R&D networks. The framework is based on a network model that highlights the main elements and characteristics of an R&D network, underlines the opportunity of three different perspectives of evaluation and has been applied and tested on three case studies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Most of the previous studies in global R&D were focused on developed economies, meaning the situation of developing countries has been neglected. Consequently, this work conducts a deep case study of eight Taiwanese companies with overseas R&D units. The sample companies came mainly from two industrial sectors: computer hardware and software. Preliminary research findings include the following: (1) firms in developing countries seem all to follow a similar path in internationalising their R&D activities, (2) companies from developed and developing countries appear to have the same motivations and use the similar methods in globalising their R&D, (3) communication and managerial process of global innovation differ for hardware and software product developments and (4) problems of communication, language and cultural difference critically affect the performance of global R&D and can be reduced by employing standard manuals, a unified language and international liaisons. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper summarises a sequence of studies of technology trade and strategies for acquisition and exploitation of technology in large corporations in Sweden, the USA and Japan during the 1980s and 1990s, Licensing in and out, and technology trade more generally, have old origins but have played only a marginal role in most companies across industries as a co-evolving complement rather than substitute for internal R&D and product sales. However, external acquisition of technology through acquisitions, joint ventures, technology purchasing and intelligence was found to have increased substantially in recent decades across sectors in large Japanese, Swedish and US corporations. With the advent of the pro-patent era in the 1980s and the concomitant surge in patenting and IP activities more generally, a pro-licensing era could be hypothesised to follow. Various empirical studies and observations have also recognised the growing importance of technology markets in general and the growth and changing nature of licensing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The front-end phase of the innovation process constitutes up to two-thirds of the total cost of new product development (NPD). In response to the new open innovation paradigm, new ways to integrate customers' knowledge into the innovation front-end must be explored. In an attempt to learn from analogous situations in which the interface between developers and customers has been managed successfully, this article analyses the Extreme Programming (XP) approach of software engineering. Through its iterative but disciplined probe-and-learn cycles, the approach helps companies effectively develop advanced products with the help of their customers. Using case studies from interviews with R&D directors of 20 technology-intensive companies, the applicability of successful practices from XP to traditional NPD is analysed. The authors identify four determinants for front-end management that reside between creativity and resource efficiency. These determinants dictate the potential for front-end effectiveness improvement and enable the maximum amount of knowledge generation and absorption from the customer [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]