An investigation into the innovation and technology transfer process in the SME sector within a university-industry collaboration context

This paper provides an initial insight into the main influencing factors that affect innovation and technology transfer (I&TT) in regional micro-manufacturers, and describes an investigation into the I&TT process in the Small-to-Medium Enterprise (SME) sector within a University-Industry collaboration context. In doing so, it explores and reflects on the innovation and technology transfer experience within a micro-manufacturer, obtained through embedment of one of the authors in an SME firm. The research initially focused on the manufacturing factors such as increasing productivity through work study and work-flow analysis, and introducing semi-automation and flexible manufacturing methodology. As the project progressed, however, several non-manufacturing factors were identified as major influences in the I&TT process within the targeted micro-manufacturer. The ability for firms to progress in improving the manufacturing factors is often dependent on these factors, which are categorized as personal and business related. The underlying project on which the work described is based involved a SWOT analysis on the business, learning and discovering the obstacles and barriers for I&TT, seeking and proposing ways to reduce it, and modeling the overall I&TT process within micro-manufacturers in regional areas, and termed regional knowledge diffusion (RKD) model