Title: International technology transfer: innovative quantitative tools

Authors: Houssam Eddine Bessam; Rainer Gadow

Addresses: Graduate School of Excellence Advanced Manufacturing Engineering (GSaME), University of Stuttgart, Nobelstr.12, 70569 Stuttgart, Germany ' Graduate School of Excellence Advanced Manufacturing Engineering (GSaME), University of Stuttgart, Nobelstr.12, 70569 Stuttgart, Germany

Abstract: International technology transfer (ITT) including transfer of knowledge and technology between companies in industrialised countries and their partners in developing countries is not necessary always successful. This work based on the experiences of professionals from North African countries (Egypt and Algeria) is an effort to build mathematical models encompassing all project stages using the existing success/failure factors of technology transfer from the literature review as input variables in order to predict the performance of ITT projects as an output and to determine a set of best practices. The gathered data about realised projects were exploited for developing linear, nonlinear models using conventional statistical approaches and also fuzzy models. These models should be seen as complementary rather than as rivals. They allow not only the prediction of an ITT project performance but also may help for a better understanding of ITT process. The performance of an ITT project in this study is a set of five success dimensions for e.g. success at the macro level and success in short term at the level of the company. These dimensions are conflicting because the increase of one success could lead to decrease in another. Therefore the use of multi-objective optimisation theory was necessary in order to determine the optimum of Pareto offering a good combination of them. ACADO toolkit and MOEA framework were used in this study for calculating the optimum of Pareto.

Keywords: international technology transfer; performance prediction; process modelling; best practices; knowledge transfer; Egypt; Algeria; mathematical modelling; fuzzy models; multi-objective optimisation.

DOI: 10.1504/IJTTC.2013.064141

International Journal of Technology Transfer and Commercialisation, 2013 Vol.12 No.1/2/3, pp.78 - 101

Received: 10 Aug 2013
Accepted: 01 Dec 2013
Published online: 10 Sep 2014 *

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