ABSTRACT
A number of contributions to this volume draw attention to the increasing volume of analysis and policy documents which point to the importance of knowledge-based innovation to business competitiveness in what is identified as ‘a knowledge economy’ (see especially Bridges above), though the people who continue to clear our blocked drains, care for our elderly and clean the houses of ‘money rich, time poor’ software designers and financial executives may feel with some reason that they occupy a different economic space. Setting aside such reservations, however, it is clear that in such an economy joining together the production of knowledge with its application in a business environment – or technology transfer as it is most widely referred to – becomes a general necessity. Such transfer takes place between the research and development arms of business itself and between publicly and privately funded research institutes and business, but in this context it is more particularly technology transfer between higher education and business which is the focus of this chapter. In the ‘countries in transition’ this is especially important, because in these countries, as Radošević and Kriaučionienė have indicated in their contribution to this volume, it is in the universities that most of the research capability is concentrated.
