ABSTRACT
A company that exists to provide services to other organizations and whose 'products' are knowledge-based, the fruits of scientific and/or technological research, is generally known as a contract research organization. There are also company-specific in-house, or otherwise 'captive' research and development units, that will sometimes sell their services to external clients, where this is commercially convenient to them. All these organizations, then, are contract research organizations in the broadest sense. The Ove Granstrand report noted a distinction in the commercial sector between 'high-tech' and 'mul-tech' organizations: Technology diversification at product level justifies the notion of multi-technology products – or 'mul-tech' products for short. The extent of external technology acquisition is a strategic choice for each business whether State or private, industrial, commercial or government. Innovations may be defined as products and/or techniques of a new quality that an innovator introduces to the market for the first time.
