ABILITIES AND COMPETENCES REQUIRED, PARTICULARLY BY SMALL FIRMS, TO IDENTIFY AND ACQUIRE NEW TECHNOLOGY

This paper reports research undertaken by an ir;tel;disciplinary team of social scientists and manufacturing engineers, into the longstandin g problem of technology transfer. It particularly focuses on the probl em of how small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) identify and acqui re new technology from universities. The research comprises an analysi s of the problem in terms of the social relations between universities and SMEs, and an attempt to build and establish the feasibility of a technology bank world wide web (WWW) site for use by SMEs. Using conce pts from recent work in social studies of science and technology, it i s argued that a key to addressing the problem is to under-stand SMEs a s unconfigured users both of government and policy initiatives, and of technological innovation. (C) 1998 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights r eserved.