Demand-pull Technology Transfer and Needs-articulation of Users: A Preliminary Study

Technology transfer processes can be technology-push or demand-pull. Whilst technology-push approaches have been dominating the field of study, we pay attention on demand-pull technology transfer. In this study, we review technology transfer literature, and try to explore important factors for demand-pull technology transfer. We argue that firms’ capabilities for articulating their technological needs are important for demand-pull technology transfer. For this argument, we carry out a preliminary study to examine the influence of the quality of needs-articulation and some other factors on the success of demand-based technology transfer. We collected 61 cases of demand-led technology transfer from National Tech-Bank(NTB) website. The quality of needs-articulation and other factors were evaluated by experts who actually had processed the technology transfer cases in the NTB's program. Using the data, we performed a logistic regression analysis. The result shows that the quality of needs-articulation has positive influence on successful demand-led technology transfer. It means that firms must clearly know, and must be able to clearly explain what technologies they are in need of. In addition, user's technological capabilities and supplier's openness were also significant factors. High p-value of technological capability is in particular an interesting result. It implies that user firms with high technological capabilities are likely to succeed in demand-pull technology transfer, which is against our prior belief that firms are eager for technology transfer because they are lacking capabilities. We suppose the possibility that user's technological capability may have influence on the quality of needs-articulation, resulting in successful technology transfer. This may imply that high technological capabilities work as absorptive capacity.