SPCE0032: Technology Strategy 25/26
Theme 3: Technology transfer and knowledge
management
Contents
Theme 3: Technology transfer and knowledge management........................................................ 1
Technology transfer .............................................................................................................. 1
Co-opetition......................................................................................................................... 2
Technology standards .......................................................................................................... 3
R&D management ................................................................................................................ 4
Intellectual property ............................................................................................................. 5
Knowledge management...................................................................................................... 7
Technology transfer
Competition
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SPCE0032: Technology Strategy 25/26
- Competence: knowledge and technical capability
- Core competence: This refers to the competencies that confer a competitive advantage
on the organisation.
Customers
Organisation
Competitors Suppliers
Co-opetition
- Usually, those organisations we consider competitors, are also playing the role of
complementors in some situations. They can also be suppliers and customers.
- Organisations often strive when they seek a win-win opportunities and allow the
organisations competitors to prosper than we do if we seek to hurt our competitors.
- An example of this is iPhone and Samsung.
- Both computation and co-operation are the driving forces for technology transfer.
Technology Transfer
- Technology transfer happens between on industry. This is the process where other
industries can help fill technological gaps and enable entry to new markets.
- Technology can be either spin-out or spin-in
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SPCE0032: Technology Strategy 25/26
o Spin-out:
▪ Spin-out technology from one industry to other industries can help fill the
gap between unsolved technology challenges. Research indicates that
organisations that are successful with spin-out can show high return on
their investment.
o Spin-in:
▪ Spin-in of technology to one industry form other industries can qualify a
technology and open new markets for that technology. As a result of spin-
in organisations have managed to get contracts they otherwise never
would have gotten.
▪ The reason for this is because they acquire technology from a different
filed.
- Technology acquisition methods
o If the technology is not developed internally within the organisation, they might
obtain the technology via:
▪ Merges and acquisitions
▪ Licensing
▪ Alliances
▪ Subcontracting
▪ Etc….
Technology standards
Types of standards
- Public meaning organisation such as the government, etc
- Privat meaning organisations such as Apple, etc
Open Standards Benefits
- Can be used to avoid vender locking to a specific piece of technology
- They can allow technology to interoperability
- Re-use of technology components built by others
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SPCE0032: Technology Strategy 25/26
- Share the data between services and systems
- Reduce the overall cost of the service
Closed standards
- They are kept confidential to prevent the interference from third party
- This could be source code of a software owned by a private company, or standards of the
confidential data formats implemented in the National Security Office
Creation of standards
- Standards can be developed in a variety of ways:
o Government imposition
▪ E.g., the UK gov select open standards for software interoperability date
and document formats.
o Collaboration between companies
▪ However, this can be expensive, because it requires staff time and
resources.
o Competition between companies
▪ However, this can also be expensive, because the organisations need to
compete for market share.
R&D management
- R&D: Research and development
o Research phase
▪ Basic research
• Is to acquire a complete knowledge or understanding of the
subject and the study without a specific application in mind.
▪ Applied research
• Is directed to gain knowledge or understanding to meet a specific
recognise the need. In other words, the research is to study
certain knowledge for meeting their set of R&D objectives.
o Development phase
▪ Protypes production and communication
• Development is a systematic use of knowledge gained form
research directed to produce useful materials, devices, systems
or methods, including design and development of prototypes and
processes.
• Prototypes are used to communicate with stakeholders
- R&D are one of the main technology acquisition methods.
- There are three different types of R&D projects:
o Incremental
▪ Small “r” and Large “D”
• Risk and difficulties are low
• It can develop strategic and core competence
o Radical
▪ Large “R” and often large “D”
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SPCE0032: Technology Strategy 25/26
• Seeks for discovering new knowledge involving substantial
technology, technical effort, risk, cost and time
• If this succeed, it can be the core competence for many years
o Fundamental
▪ Large “R” and no “D”
• This research is expected to show results in the log term (e.g., 15-
20 years)
• It is a prediction and preparation for the future
• Often very difficult, however, the investment must be done now
• The aim is to predict future possibilities or trends; therefore, the
development phase is not needed
- To effectively manage R&D projects, management approaches must have been
developed and managed over time.
Intellectual property
- Refers to creative work, inventions, trademarks, designs and confidential information
and trade secrets.
o Creative work refers to literary, dramatic, musical, etc. which are the results of
the intellectual creation.
o Inventions refers to new products or services, or new processes to produce the
product or service.
o Trademarks refers to signs indicate origin of goods or services which are used for
communication, investment and advertising.
o Design refers to the appearance of the product resulting from the features of
lines, counters, colours, shapes, texture or materials of the product its
ornamentation.
o Confidential information and trade secrets refers to commercial and technical
information. This can be practical knowledge gained from working experience.
- Intellectual property rights include:
o Patent
o Design right
o Copyright
o Trademarks
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SPCE0032: Technology Strategy 25/26
- Some intellectual property rights can be profitable in nature and has monopolistic ri ght
such as patent, which can benefit innovative manufacturers or firms if it is managed
strategically.
- The monopoly right of the patent can protect the inventors creation, reward inventors
with royalty and license fees and promote the inventors reputation. As a result of this,
patent can encourage more research and development activities and disclosure of the
invention, to lead to more technology. This is called the motivation strategy.
- However, the monopoly right of patent can also have innovative company to exclude
competitors by serving barriers for entry, increasing production cost of competitors or
preventing the competitors from imitation. Then market is secured and so is a profit. As a
result of this, patent can encourage healthy computation between competitors, leading
to more technology and innovation.
- A strong portfolio can also be attractive to investors, so that more resources can be
invested on exploiting the patent and turn them into new products or services in the
market.
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SPCE0032: Technology Strategy 25/26
- “Motivation strategy”: patent can be used to encourage more R&D activities (from
researchers or any employee), as it protects and rewards for the inventor’s ingenuity.
- “Attacking strategy”: patent (as a protection method) can be used in a way to exclude
competitors and secures a large market for the manufacturer, by preventing imitation,
increasing the production cost of competitors, signalling better product quality or
serving barriers for entry.
- “Patent licensing strategy”: a strong patent portfolio enhances a company’s
technological reputation and attracts more investors.
- “Ring-fencing strategy”: Predicting future applications and improvements on the basic
inventions for the purpose of pre-empting competitors and covering any possible future
applications.
Knowledge management
- What is knowledge?
-
- Knowledge is the capacity to do things based on the information data collected in a way
that synthesises this data and information.
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SPCE0032: Technology Strategy 25/26
- When talking about knowledge sharing, we mean knowledge about the technological
process.
- What is knowledge management?
o The organised effort to create and capitalize on intellectual material
o The approach addresses creation, contribution, diffusion, reuse and evolution of
knowledge.
o Creates change through collaboration
▪ Shared experiences
▪ Best practice
▪ Collaborative spirit
- Requirements of knowledge management
o There are five main pillars that helps organisations do this properly.
▪ Effective collaboration
• Needs to be built into the whole idea of knowledge management
within an organisation.
▪ Credibility
• Knowledge that is collected within the knowledge management
system for an organisation.
▪ Acceptance and ownership
• The one that uses the knowledge needs to accept it but also have
the feeling of owning the knowledge.
▪ Internal efficiency
▪ Peer review
• Needs to allow people give comments on the knowledge
contributed by others.
- Knowledge environment
o Helps implement by creation and exploitation of intellectual capital. This mean
that an organisation wants to create this environment as part of their culture.
This is because this is how they can make most out of the knowledge.
o Four elements of knowledge environment
▪ Knowledge base
• Groups of people organised to build and share knowledge on
specific business topics, giving people access to knowledge held
in repositories, and to each other.
▪ Knowledge communities
• Captures the knowledge and the intellectual output of the
organisation and provides a map to its expertise.
▪ Knowledge processes
• Day to day business processes to enable knowledge generation,
utilisation & development.
▪ Knowledge infrastructure
• The applications and technical infrastructure that support a
knowledge environment.