An-Najah National University Faculty of Graduate Studies Strengthening University – Industry Collaboration in Palestine via Technology and Knowledge Transfer By Ass’ad Albydah Supervisor Dr. Yahya Saleh This Thesis is Submitted in Partial Fulfilment of the Requirements for the Master Degree in Engineering Management, Faculty of Graduate Studies, An-Najah National University, Nablus- Palestine. 2016 ii Strengthening University – Industry Collaboration in Palestine via Technology and Knowledge Transfer By Ass’ad Albydah This Thesis was Defended Successfully on 7/2/2016 and approved by: Defense Committee Members Signature 1. Dr. Yahya Saleh/ Supervisor ...….……… 2. Dr. Adnan Judeh / External Examiner ...….……… 3. Dr. Imad Break / Internal Examiner .…………… iii Acknowledgment I would never have been able to finish my dissertation, if there is not reconcile from Almighty Allah firstly, and then without the guidance of my committee members support from my family, wife, and help from friends. So, first of all, I would like to express my deepest gratitude and sincere thanks to my supervisor, Dr. Yahya Saleh, for his excellent guidance, support, caring, patience, encouragement, motivation and valuable advices that have resulted in the completion of this thesis. I would also like to thank my instructors, Dr. Hussam Arman, Dr. Yahya Saleh, Dr. Ayham Jaaron, Dr. Mohammed Othman, Dr. Rabeh Mrarr, Dr. Abdul Fattah Shamleh, and Eng. Suleiman Daifi for helping me in overcoming Engineering Management program courses successfully at An-Najah National University, and guiding me to develop my background in subjects that are related to this thesis. I would also like to thank committee members, Dr. Emad Break, Dr. Adnan Judeh for their time and effort in reviewing this work. I would also like to thank my parents, Abdallah albidah and Salwa albidah, brothers, Ahmed and Amjad albidah. They were always supporting me and encouraging me with their best wishes. I would like to thank my wife, Alaa albidah. She was always there cheering me up and stood by me through the good times and bad. Finally, thanks to all universities specialists, industry specialists , Government specialists , universities acadimcs, universities students who provided me with valuable informations. Thank you iv رقاا اإل أنا الموقع أدناه، مقدم الرسالة التي تحمل العنوان: Strengthening University – Industry Collaboration in Palestine via Technology and Knowledge Transfer إّنما هو نتاج جهدي الخاص، باستثناء ما تّمت اإلشارة إليه أقر بأن ما شملت عليه هذه الرسالة ، وأّن هذه الرسالة ككل، أو أّي جزء منها لم يقّدم من قبل لنيل أّي درجة أو لقب علمّي حيثما ورد لدى أّي مؤسسة تعليمية أو بحثية أخرى. Declaration The work provided in this thesis, unless otherwise referenced, is the researcher’s own work, and has not been submitted elsewhere for any other degree or qualification. Student's Name: :اسم الطالب Signature: التورقيع: Date: :التا يخ v Table of Contents No. Content Page Acknowledgment iii Declaration iv List of Abbreviations vii List of Tables viii List Figures ix Abstract x Chapter One: introduction 1 1.1 Background 1 1.2 Knowledge Based Societies 2 1.3 Problem of the Study 3 1.4 Research Questions 4 1.5 Research Objectives 4 1.6 Significance of the Research 5 1.7 Research Structure 5 Chapter Two: Literature Review 2.1 university-industry Collaboration (UIC) 7 2.1.1 University Role and Motivations in the UIC 7 2.1.1.1 Knowledge and Technology Transfer Centres (Offices) K&TTC or K&TTO 912 2.1.2 Industry Role and motivations in the UIC 13 2.1.3 Government Role in the UIC 16 2.2 UIC Via knowledge and Technology transfer 16 2.2.1 Definition of Knowledge and Technology Transfer 17 2.2.2 The world's attention to Knowledge and technology transfer 18 2.2.3 Knowledge and Technology Transfer in Palestine 21 2.2.4 Forms of Knowledge and Technology Transfer 22 2.2.5 Knowledge and Technology and Transfer Models 24 2.2.6 Knowledge and Technology Transfer Stakeholders 29 2.2.7 Factors influencing K&TT process 30 2.2.8 Participant’s related factors 30 2.2.9 Content related factors 47 2.2.10 Transfer method related factors 48 Chapter Three: Methodology 49 3.1 Introduction 49 3.2 Data collection methods 51 vi 3.2.1 University and industry Interviews 51 3.2.2 Sample size of universities 51 3.2.3 Sample size of the Industry 52 3.2.4 University and Industry Interview design 54 3.2.5 Quality of the Research Tool 57 3.2.6 Distribution of the interviews 59 3.2.7 Researcher's Questionnaire 60 3.2.8 Sample size of the researchers inside the university 65 3.2.9 Distribution of Researchers Questionnaire 70 3.2.10 Government interview 71 Chapter Four : Data results and analysis 73 4.1 university-industry interview result and analysis 73 4.1.1 Industry interview results and analysis 74 4.1.2 Universities interview results 78 4.1.3 Status of the factors that affect K&TT Collaborations in Palestine 80 4.1.4 Discussion of the universities and industry interview 88 4.2 Researcher Questionnaire results and analysis 89 4.2.1 Discussion of researcher’s questionnaire results 92 4.3 Government Interview results 93 4.3.1 Discussion of government interview results 95 4.4 Conclusions and Recommendations 95 4.5 Operational framework 97 References 101 Appendix 118 ب الملخص vii List of Abbreviations Abbreviation Description UIC University-Industry Collaboration K&TTC Knowledge and Technology Transfer Center K&TTO Knowledge andTechnology Transfer Office K&TT Knowledge and Technology Transfer ICT Information and Communication Technology UITT University-Industry Technology Transfer K&TTP KnowledgeandTechnology Transfer Programs IJV International Joint Venture IP Intellectual Property IPR Intellectual Property Rights BDA Bayh Dole Act HEIs Higher Education Institutions MONE Ministry Of National Economy viii List of Tables No. Title Page 2.1 Summary of most famous models 1945-1990 24 2.2 Summary of most famous models 1991-2000 25 3.1 data collection method for each participant in the K&TT collaboration process 51 3.2 Universities included in the study 52 3.3 companies nominated by the unions of industries 54 3.4 The factors and its determinants and which question designed to measure it 56 3.5 Summary of companies’ number and responses 60 3.6 Sample size needed for each category of the researchers 67 3.7 sample size needed 68 4.1 Factors and its determinants evaluation for industry 77 4.2 Factors and its determinants evaluation for universities 79 4.3 level of Factors efficiency and its explanations 82 4.4 Summary of Factors levels 88 4.5 The Scale and Indication of Means 90 4.6 Shows the results of the Questionnaire responses 91 4.7 Readiness level of researchers to produce a transferable research projects 91 4.8 Motivations that encourage researchers to produce research projects 92 A1 Shows the detailed answers that the industry responses, with the most common theme answers, and the number of companies that answered this question 118 A2 shows the detailed answers that the universities responses, with the most common theme answers, and the number of universities that answered this question 128 A3 Questions of the interview 137 ix List of Figures No. Title Page 2.1 outline of need to knowledge model (lane 2012) 26 2.2 MANOLEA model for K&TT regarding innovation concept(Manoela,2012) 27 2.3 Traditional Model of University Technology Transfer (Siegel et al,2003) 27 2.4 Alternative Model of University Technology Transfer (Bradley,2013) 28 3.1 diagram shows each participant and its role 50 4.1 procedure researcher developed for data analysis 75 4.2 Operational framework for K&TT collaborations 98 x Strengthening University – Industry Collaboration in Palestine via Technology and Knowledge Transfer By Ass’ad Albydah Supervisor Dr. Yahya Saleh Abstract Collaboration between universities and industry is critical to create a win- win communications through research projects that provide the two parties with the necessary knowledge and technology for developing them and the whole socio-economic system by providing innovations that support and develop individuals, companies, higher education institutions, and have the impact on society, too. This thesis was conducted to understand the whole knowledge and technology transfer process by identifying the factors that affect the K&TT collaboration, determining the stakeholders of these collaborations and evaluating the current states of these factors according to each participant role in the K&TT collaborations. These factors were determined and evaluated through literature review, experts interviews, and data analysis procedures. This thesis will also provide the necessary information, identifying concepts that help universities and industry for better understanding of the K&TT collaborations, providing a framework that helps universities and industry collaborate smoothly and clearly. xi After determining the participants of the K&TT process , the factors that affect the K&TT process were determined, then designing tools for collecting data from the participants for studing the current status to apply these factors practically, and the participants were the universities, the industry sector, the government as well as the the students and the researchers associated to the universities. The companies were chosen from the industrial sector on which the researcher can do interviews with them concerning the K&TT related factors, according to recommendations of the industrial sub uonions, and the number of candidates companies was 85, those who responded in the interview were 64 which is equivalent to 54.1% from the companies, the questions of the interviews were designed according to the affecting factors in the process of K&TT and it’s determinants which were concluded from the literature review. These interviews were designed to be suitable for both of the main participants associated in the K&TT process, and they are the industrial sector and the universities, as for the government a special interview was made for studying the intellectual properties and the roles concerned. The students and the researchers inside the university are the main source producing knowledge and technology which can be transferred to the industrial sectors, the factors that motivates producing transferable research projects have been determined, and a questionnaire was conducted to xii determine their readinessto produce research and graduation projects that are suitable for transfer to the industrial sectors . The results of the questinniare and interviews have showen many Informations and results which help to promote the awareness, there understanding for such processes, and there benefits. the universities were pioneers and showed a good level in dealing with such programs, while the industrial sector was in a low level in dealing with K&TT programs for many resons, the most important one is the finacial view and the ignorance of social dimension and community responsibility. The results of the questionnaire showed that the students and researchers inside the aimed facultiesinside the universities were having a very good level for providing suitable transferable research projects, but they lack the stimulus and the confidence in universities and the industrial sectors in particular to support them in these projects. 1 Chapter One Introduction 1.1. Background The concept of innovation has become the obsession of the new world, and an arena for competition between companies and industries. Innovation as a concept was provided and developed by researchers who were related strongly to universities which produced the basic knowledge and skills to them. So the pure source of innovation and its related concepts like technology and technology transfer were the universities at the first place. companies seeking for innovation and new knowledge and technologies were aware of this source and they are trying to exploit knowledge and technology in the form of partnerships, linkages, joint venture, technology and knowledge transfer and other forms of collaborations to achieve common interests of both partners (universities and companies) (Vorbach et al., 2014). In this thesis, I introduce the concepts and models of Technology and knowledge Transfer programs and the differences among these models. Then, based on the special requirement of the Palestinian economy and market, I study which model is mostly appropriate and what is the impact of adopting such a model on the Palestinian economy. The main objective of the study is to evaluate the applicability of Technology and knowledge Transfer models in Palestine. The study will focus on the motivation and incentive of the main stakeholders of the Knowledge and Technology 2 Transfer (KK&TT), namely, the researcher, the university, the government and the industry sector. Understanding the main advantages and how to overcome the obstacles of this process will help policy makers in their decision making. 1.2. Knowledge Based Societies Knowledge-based societies are well-educated societies and they understand their needs well for developing the best economy, relying on innovation and entrepreneurial to compete in the globalized world (OAS, 2014). It is hard to satisfy these societies because of the too many alternatives in the globalized markets and they are more demanding too, this makes it difficult for the local and global industry to satisfy these needs, in addition to the severe competition and the lack of sources of new ideas with appropriate costs. During the search for the source of new ideas, industry went to the source of knowledge and the provider of the human capital to the community and that have the needed skills, personnel, labs and the infrastructure needed without costing it a single dollar, So there is no need to build or recruit employees with the aim of finding new ideas that worth the risk of money for that, this source is the university, industry needs to make a strong linkage with the university to help the industry in developing and achieving goals to satisfy the demand of their customers. (Barton, 2014). 3 1.3. Problem of the Study Knowledge, technology, innovation and R&D are strong concepts in the world of strong socio-economic systems. To develop these systems there is a need to strengthen university – industry relationships to create strong local economy and to provide the necessary fund for the university to develop their research systems and to produce a strong market oriented R&D. Palestine is late in the field of technology and innovation, however, there is a high level of creativity in a shape of graduate projects, theses, papers made by under-graduates, graduates, PhD students and researchers. This source of ideas which is untapped correctly needs to be utilized well. Moreover, Palestinian economy is weak and needs any source of financial support in a form of money, products and knowledge as well .Transforming the documented knowledge in the universities has to be innovated and marketed as a form of products, software, books and in a form of ideas will bring to Palestine such support and encourage new ideas and encourage students to be creative. The lack of knowledge and technology transfer programs (K&TTP) in Palestine results in a loss of many opportunities to develop our economy and encourage our student to be creative. To overcome this dilemma, this research tries to build a strong operational framework to create, develop, protect, organize, manage, and encourage the university –industry collaborations. This model will be as a technology and knowledge transfer model from the universities to the industry including public and private sectors. 4 1.4. Research Questions 1. What are the factors that affect K&TT collaboration process? 2. What is the current status of these factors? 3. What are the obstacles that prevent or hinder the application of K&TT collaboration programs? 4. What are the procedures that can be done to mitigate these obstacles? 5. What are the incentives that encourage the participants in the K&TT Collaboration programs? 6. What is the role of each participant to mitigate these barriers ? 1.5. Research Objectives This research aims to achieve the following objectives: 1. Studying the current status of Palestinian university-industry knowledge and technology transfer collaborations. 2. Identify the factors that affect these collaborations. 3. Investigating the factors that affect the university–industry K&TT Collaboration. 4. Creating an operational framework that helps to strengthen the university-industry partnerships via Technology and knowledge transfer process. 5 1.6. Significance of the Research As shown previously, Palestine needs to develop a partnership between the various society components, to develop the socio-economic system and create a strong economy. This need must encourage the strongest components of the country, university which has the needed knowledge and skills and human capital and the industry which has the capital, partnerships or collaborations will not only provide the fund needed to the university to develop its own R&D system, It will also provide a pure source of innovation, creativity and efficiency to the industry. The social impact will grow to provide a local financial impact in form of money, careers and knowledge. The operational framework (Model) which will be developed will be the Roadmap to each participant in the K&TT process. It will also sensitize them into the points that participants have concealed. And will provide a strong base for Self-development to catch up with the modern world and to be more scientific and market-oriented at the same time. 1.7. Research Structure This thesis consists of four chapters, the first chapter is the introduction to this research, and it includes general information about the UIC and K&TT process and its related concepts and importance, the second chapter draws the theoretical part of the K&TT process and its related concepts, the third chapter is a methodology part that discusses research data collection techniques, building and analysis procedures in more depth, the last chapter 6 analyzes and discusses the results of research, rounds out this research by concluding and providing recommendations, this chapter also includes the framework design and its related procedures. 7 Chapter Two Literature Review 2.1. University-Industry Collaboration (UIC) University-Industry (U-I) relationships have been the focus of a growing number of studies, particularly since the 1990s.(Texerira & Mota, 2012), The relevance of cooperation between University and Industry has been highlighted by several authors (e.g., Agrawal, 2001, (Bekkers & Freitas, 2008)) who stress, for instance, that universities can contribute to regional development through the production and transfer of (Colombo, et al., 2009); (Bergman, 2010) One of the first policies adopted in the wide world is the Bayh -Dole Act (BDA) in the United States, this law is economically drives a policy for encouraging collaborations and IPR protection, considered by a lot of authors as the first law that US universities, small business and non-profit organizations began to control of the intellectual property of their inventions (Aldridge & Audretsch, 2011).The BDA is considered an example for commercially focused innovation (Gibson & Naquin, 2011) A lot of countries follow the US by developing national policies that encourage the IPR protection to encourage people, companies and industry to control their IPR and to gain the maximum benefits from it, France, UK, Sweden, and Italy is an example of the countries that follow the steps of the US in the IPR policies (Gibson & Naquin, 2011) 8 Partnership, linkage and collaboration refer to the same concept of university-industry relationship which aims to create a win-win situation that provides the university with the needed fund to provide a source of new innovative ideas to the industry. The concept of UIC is not new, the world has an experience of 20 years (Lee, 2000). Now in 2015 we have a 35- year experience and a lot of failure and success stories in the wide world. Globalization and rapid ICT development made a high competitive environment to the organizations forcing them to look for new ideas for the innovation and productivity and other factors that provide a competitive advantage to have a share in the local and global markets, Partnerships are the solution to generate researches that help to achieve the goal, partnership with customers, suppliers even competitors, but partnership with universities was the strongest one because of the university experience in the field of research and development and the availability of capabilities and competences . (Autio, E, et al., 1996), (Thorgren, S, et al., 2009), (Plewa, C, et al., 2013). There are many studies about UIC and each country has its own special situation and characteristics, what has been applied in one country is not necessarily to be successful in another country (Shahin, M & Thiruchelvam,K, 2012). 9 2.1.1. University Role and Motivations in the UIC If we look inside any dictionary, we will find a clear definition of university as follows :“A high-level educational institution in which students study for degrees and academic research is done “ (Oxford, 2014)), so the main mission of the university is teaching and most importantly the academic research, this academic research has two types, basic and applied. Research is made by students who are forced to do to complete graduation requirements, the students have a choice in which subject they want to do their research, but most students are looking for the easiest and cheapest way. Because of that one finds a lot of imitation and incremental researches, but still if students find the guidance and the fund they will be encouraged to do more effort in their research. The university plays this role to encourage them specially if this will bring more financial returns, university plays a major role in the UIC process and it is a key element in the innovation systems by providing the human capital and a seed-bed of new firms, (Etzkowitz, H, et al., 2000). To play this role successfully, the university must transform from traditional teaching and research form to an entrepreneurial form that guides the researchers to be market oriented. Entrepreneurial university is a knowledge producer and disseminating institution and a survivor in the competitive environment with common strategies oriented to be the best in all their activities. It is not only a promoter but it is also a developer for the 10 administrative techniques, strategies or competitive postures. Based on this, entrepreneurial universities are involved in partnerships, networks and other relationships with public and private organizations that are an umbrella for interaction, collaboration, co-operation and among the core elements of a national innovation system many different interactions may exist (Guerrero,M & Urbano,D, 2010). Academic engagement in the UIC projects will stimulate the researchers to have an insight on which kind of ideas will be more commercially valuable .In that case they can develop or co-develop inventions that can be patented, licensed or to enable a new start-ups, especially, when these new start-ups will work collaboratively with the university labs they originated from (Meyer, 2003). So, the university will provide this process with new ideas that can be commercialized in a form of new technologies, processes, knowledge and services that can be produced to industry. The question now will be why do universities need collaboration? (Lee, 2000) mentioned eight reasons that motivate the university to be a part of UIC as follows: 1. To supplement funds for one’s own academic research. 2. To test the practical application of one’s own research and theory. 3. To gain insights in the area of one’s own research. 4. To further the university’s outreach mission. 11 5. To look for business opportunity. 6. To gain knowledge about practical problems useful for teaching. 7. To create student internships and job placement opportunities. 8. To secure funding for research assistants and lab equipment. A number of existing articles mention the motivations for university to collaborate. For example (Siegel et al. 2003) found that one main motivation for the university scientists is that they gain recognition from fellow scientists by publishing articles in some of the top journals, by having new and valid research results to present to their fellow scientists during conferences, and receiving research grants through the collaboration with an industrial partner. (Valentin, 2000)has also found that publications and citations are motivational factors. Valentin has also found that some scientists see the opportunity to gain financial revenue for themselves as a motivation to join in collaboration (Lee, 2000) has found the main motivation for scientists to engage in collaboration centres was to gain additional funding for assistants and laboratory equipment. (Valentin, 2000) Has found that for university scientists, one of the main motivations was related to the university’s social contribution in society, as the university also sees the development of its reputation as a motivational factor to commit in collaborations. Another motivation for university is the possibility to test the existing theories in practice and the creating of new hypotheses and paradigms (Valentin, 2000) 12 2.1.1.1. Knowledge and Technology Transfer Centres (Offices) ( K and K&TTC or K and K&TTO ) Knowledge and Technology Transfer centres (K&TTC), Knowledge and Technology transfer Offices (K&TTO) have the responsibility inside the university over the UIK&TT collaboration process. K&TTO is an institution set up by the university in order to do the following responsibilities: 1. Discover the potentials for commercialization. 2. Evaluate the potentials. 3. Provide sufficient justifications to fill a patent for the domestic or global protection. 4. Make prior judgment to interests being expressed by industry. 5. Negotiations with the private firms or entrepreneurs for licensing agreements for intellectual property. And other responsibilities and tasks that may (K&TTO) do according to the type and size of the university and the type of the innovation process (Siegel, et al., 2003) Another definition by another author (Zawad, 2010) is: K&TTO is an institution set up by the university in order to do the following responsibilities: 13 1. Manage the expectations of faculty inventors by providing the principal investigator with a summary of the prerogatives and responsibilities of each partner. 2. Exercise due diligence in evaluating each technology for protect ability and commercial potential. 3. Keep the principal investigator fully informed of the status of evaluation, patenting and licensing activities; and Maintain momentum throughout the process. And there are other responsibilities and tasks that may (K&TTO) work according to the type and size of the university and the type of the innovation process (Zawad, 2010). 2.1.2. Industry Role and motivations in the UIC As mentioned previously, industry has its own reasons to collaborate with universities, according to (Lee, 2000) the following is a list of the reasons for the firms to be a part of the UIC process: 1. To solve specific technical or design problems 2. To develop new products and processes 3. To conduct research leading to new patents 4. To improve product quality 5. To reorient Research and Development agenda 14 6. To have access to new research _via seminars and workshops. 7. To maintain an ongoing relationship and network with the university 8. To conduct ‘‘blue sky’’ research in search of new technology 9. To conduct fundamental research with no specific applications in mind, and 10. To recruit university graduates. (Valentin, 2000)and (Lai, 2011) both found that industry’s motivation to engage in collaboration with universities, includes the possibility to enhance the organizations’ reputation, a motivation also found among the university’s motivations to collaboration. (Siegel et al.,2003) found that the absolute main motivation for industry to join in collaboration with university is to gain financial value, by commercialization of the technologies developed by scientists. (Siegel et al,2003) found that to obtain the highest value of the new technologies the collaborating industry often tries to gain full control of the technology so that competitors do not have easy access to the technologies, this tells us that UIC is a fertile soil to gain competitive advantage. A part of this is also seen in (Valentin, 2000)where it was found that the industry’s motivations include the possibility to increase the competitiveness of the organization (Lee, 2000) as shown in above found that the primary motive for the industry’s technology managers to engage in collaboration with university is to get help of product development 15 research, and secondary motive was research into new technological areas. While the secondary motive is to participate in seminars about new research, only 7.1 per cent of the managers had this as a primary motive.(Lee, 2000) From (Lai, 2011) it is also seen that the industry’s motivation include the possibility to find new products or technologies, as well as, knowledge transfer from university to industry. (Lee, 2000)has also found that the primary motive for collaboration was the industry’s need to help design of prototypes and technical problem solving. (Valentin, 2000)has found that one of the main motivations for industry to engage in collaboration is that they need help to carry out technological research, for which they do not have the competences in-house, and therefore it is a motivation to be able to access the university laboratories, staff and their new knowledge and skills. As we have seen, several motivations for both industry and university to engage in collaboration as shown above. Among the most important for the university was the possibility to gain additional funding for laboratory equipment and research assistants, as well as, the possibility to test existing theory in practice and get insight and clarification into the scientists own research. From the industry’s side, it was the possibility to gain access to the university’s laboratories and scientists’ knowledge, and the possibility to receive help on research. 16 2.1.3. Government Role in the UIC It is clearly that the government which controls each legal action in the country and manages the citizens, companies and every component of the society has a set of regulations that control and protect common interests in the UIC process. Moreover, some of the output from the UIC process could be transferred to the public sector which is controlled by the government itself. 2.2. UIC Via knowledge and Technology transfer Technology and innovation were popular concepts in the 20th century, they are important for the development of economy and provide the basis for superiority among organizations around the world. The use of the term technology is not limited only to refer to a technological instrument (e.g., computer, mobile phone), but rather it is used to refer to wider meanings. It can refer to a form of knowledge such as a software platform technology, or some medicine production techniques. Similarly, the concept of innovation has a broad meaning in the literature depending on the perspective of the involved organization or institution in the process. Generally, innovation can be defined as the process of generating an idea, transforming it into a product, and commercializing the product. However, different organizations see it differently. (Buys, A & Oosthuizen, R, 2003) 17 The competitive search for new technologies and new innovations among companies and industrial firms naturally led to the birth of knowledge and Technology Transfer (K&TT) programs in several countries years ago. This concept is particularly important for the development and competitiveness of economy. The term K&TT is used to refer to a subset of different kinds of knowledge and innovation dissemination. However, it is broadly defined as the process of transferring knowledge, innovation and technology from one form into another. (Bozeman, 2000) Knowledge and Technology transfer is a complicated and hard process which is not productive and worthy without planning and realization, and the result may cause a loss in money, time and generate weak technology or knowledge.(Asghari & Pakhshanikia, 2013). 2.2.1. Definition of Knowledge and Technology Transfer In literature, there are several definitions of K&TT depending on the form of transfer and the entities involved. The term can refer to the transformation of innovation and knowledge from research laboratories in a university to a commercial product in industry (Young, 2005), another definition focuses on the transfer through licenses and patents forms, (AUTM, 2013): "The process whereby inventions or intellectual property from academic research is licensed or conveyed through use rights to industry". The name is also used to refer to the transfer of technology from a developed country to a developing country, in a clear and simple words, K&TT is the process by which the maker of technology makes his/her 18 technology available to commercialization by a partner that will exploit it (Sajid, et al., 2012) In the context of this Thesis, I adopt the definition, which refers to transferring university research projects to the industry sector for commercialization. 2.2.2. The world's attention to Knowledge and technology transfer In order to show the world's attention to technology transfer, we will look at some countries such as the United States, Malaysia, and Brazil. Universities and their K&TTO play important roles in managing the IP (intellectual property) produced by intellectuals; innovation created becomes meaningless if commercialization is not done properly. Funding and investment pump in to the universities will stop at one point. Commercialization will ensure the continuous flow of income for the future of a nation. Developing countries are learning from the past experience of the developed ones to create a financial and innovative resource, by adopting technology and knowledge transfer programs such as China and Turkey, (Abd Rahman,S, et al., 2011) K&TTP have existed in the United States since 1983 or before that because of industrial strength of it. These projects have been very successful and developed the basic principles for technology transfer since that time, especially, from universities to local industry, in 1998 Trine and Gosling 19 made a profit-loss analysis in the US On 168 universities, hospitals and research centres and they found that $434 Million was the community benefit of technology transfer programs (Turne,L & Golson,L, 1998). With the passage of years and the expansion of industries and the expansion of markets and the large number of competitors in all kinds of industry, an urgent need to source of innovation has appeared, In these days universities plays a major role in the technology and knowledge transfer . In Brazil as a country which evolved significantly K&TT collaborations was a part of the evolution of the innovation concept in it, Rozana Giorgio discusses how Brazil has dramatically increased knowledge and technology transfer through the State University of Campinas, the leader in patenting and licensing activities in Brazil and Latin America. She talked about the increasing number of patenting activates in the Brazilian universities which have an impact on the level of innovation in the Brazilian quality of life. (Giorgio, 2007) In 2010 (Póvoa,C & Rapini,M, 2010)talked about the general characteristics of technology transfer in Brazil, and showed a remarkable results, they said that there are several channels of technology transfer patents and licensing is one of them. About 45% of interactions refer to the transfer of new processes and techniques, while new product transfers account for 29.4% of total interactions. This information demonstrates that 20 universities generate technologies that are used to prepare products, instead of being sources of new products ready to commercialization. (Póvoa,C & Rapini,M, 2010). In 2010, Malaysia has announced New Economic Transformation Program. This increase of income from USD6, 700 or RM 23,700 in 2009 to more than USD15, 000 or RM48, 000 in 2020, Innovation is the drivers for the nation wealth creation, Government has Announced 2012 as Malaysia innovation year.(Ismail, 2011). Dr. Kamariah reviewed the background of Malaysian universities and the number of patents that registered during 2005 to 2011 and noticed the large increase of them. He took a UTM (university of technology Malaysia) as a success case study. (Ismail, 2011). In the Arab world there is a gap between the current status of the Arabic states and the world in the field of R&D and K&TT. Despite the deep gap between the Arab countries and the world in the field of research and development, there is strong awareness to develop and establish the infrastructure and skills that lead to develop strong R&D and K&TT systems, and the need to invest more on R&D. Abu Dhabi, Qatar, Jordan, Morocco and Tunisia witnessed increasing trends in the innovation concept in several fields. (Sasson, 2007). 21 2.2.3. Knowledge and Technology Transfer in Palestine In Palestine, there are so many challenges which face the implementation of the university technology transfer. One of them is that universities of Palestine still haven’t the resources needed for the implementation of these programs such as, staff, money, space and other things. The other challenge will be the industry willingness to adopt such programs, According to the website of the Palestinian Ministry of National Economy, the contribution of the industrial sector in the GDP does not exceed 16% . A project called STEP project funded by TEMPUS a European Commission for strengthening universities-enterprises linkage in Palestine has shown that 67% of the universities in Palestine consulted in the project do not have any kind of university liaison offices at all. Almost none of the universities consulted in the project take into account intellectual property (IP) issues in the R&D process with other entities. Most of them leave the concept of the technology transfer to the individuals and they do not have a specific unit for that purpose. Only 17 % are depending on analysing technology demand and need of the organizations for coordinating research activities. (Step, 2014) This leads us to the conclusion that, technology transfer in Palestine suffers from a weakness because of the so many reasons, one of them is the weak industry and the other to the Israeli occupation and collectively this causes the delay in the development of the industrial sector and economy in Palestine. 22 2.2.4. Forms of Knowledge and Technology Transfer According to (Schnaars, 1989), in general there are two major types of technology transfer, horizontal and vertical transfer of technology: 1. Horizontal transfer of technology refers to the transfer of the technology in the form of idea, innovation, and the exact technology from a country, organization, to another. 2. Vertical transfer refers to the transfer of the technology among the process of the R & D department to the manufacturing process of the same organization. Vertical or horizontal technology transfer can occur in many forms or types. (Uchida, 1990)classified the forms of technology transfer into eleven types depending on the capacity and policies of the parties involved in the size of the technological gap, the amount and quality of the technical information available, the degree of supplier intervention and the initiative shown by the recipient, starting with the types of transfer where the recipient exhibits a high degree of dependence on the supplier country to types where the recipient exercises a high degree of independence. The various forms of technology transfer can be classified as follows: 1. Overseas factories founded through direct investment by suppliers 2. Businesses established by migrants from the supplier country 23 3. Joint ventures 4. Management contracts with suppliers 5. Turnkey contracts, where suppliers guarantee the transfer of technology when they construct a factory 6. The employment of engineers and skilled workers provided by the suppliers or by businesses owned by the receivers 7. Purchase contracts for machinery and know-how 8. Technology transfer as an integral part of the machinery imported by the recipient 9. Patent license agreements 10. Production of imitations 11. In-house development of a technology Other types of technology transfer depend on the cases that are taken from the technology transfer from the west to Japan (Uchida, 1990). (Manolea, 2012)Divided the technology transfer into three types: 1. Transfer of technology from the basic research form to the applicative form. 2. The transfer of technology from the applicative form to the industry. 3. A transfer from creative-innovative activities carried out by individuals (Ph.D. students, inventors, creators) to applicative activity (we have to mention that sometimes it is necessary to have an intermediate stage of applicative research or technological adaptation. 24 2.2.5. Knowledge and Technology Transfer Models There is no specified model or framework for the process of technology transfer or which is called sometimes innovation to commercialization process some describe it as a black box because each university has its own model for K&T. (Bradley,S, et al., 2013). Table (1) will summarize the most famous models since 1945 until 1990 According to (Gibson & Smilor, 1991). Table 2- 1: Summary of most famous models 1945-1990 Model Year 1 The Appropriability Model 1945-1950 2 The Dissemination Model 1960-170 3 The Knowledge Utilization Model Late 1980’s 4 The Communication Model 1990’s These models are called traditional models, in those years the markets were empty and the technology push was the adopted method, these models focused on two major concepts: 1) The promotion, adoption and diffusion of new innovations and technologies to potential users 2) K&TT processes. 25 The early K&TT models were developed to govern the implementation of K&TT activities and their application to market place. After the 1990s, the models had been changed to focused on other factors, these were the most famous models until 2000 according to (Sung & Gibson, 2000) Table 2- 2: Summary of most famous models 1991-2000 Model Year Gibson and Slimmer’s Model 1991 Rebentisch and Ferret’s Model 1995 Sung and Gibson’s Model 2000 The models after the 1990s had developed to address the weaknesses and limitations that happened in the traditional K&TT models, by focusing on 1. Level of K&TT. 2. Communication between participants. 3. Factors that influence K&TT. (Haslinda, A, et al., 2009). In 2012, Lane proposed an operational framework (model) for technology and knowledge transfer: 26 Figure 2- 1 : outline of need to knowledge model (lane 2012). 27 Manolea also proposed a model for K&TT showing the stakeholders in the holeprocess Figure 2- 2: MANOLEA model for K&TT regarding innovation concept (Manoela,2012). In 2013, a literature study was conducted to show the traditional and non- traditional models of K&TT and they showed the following models: a. Traditional Model of University Technology Transfer : Figure 2- 3: Traditional Model of University Technology Transfer (Siegel et al,2003). b. Non-traditional models of University Technology Transfer : In the study they found that the traditional liner model of K&TT cannot be used in all universities, especially, that the knowledge flow cannot be simple to be represented by a liner flow. So they said each university must create its own model and they performed an alternative model of K&TT as shown in figure (2-4) 28 Figure 2- 4: Alternative Model of University Technology Transfer (Bradley,2013). 29 In this model they put all operations that could be done in the K&TT process according to the study they made, it could be modified to be convenient with any university K&TT process. 2.2.6. Knowledge and Technology Transfer Stakeholders According to what was said previously, we can find that there are three major stake holders in K&TT process: 1. The university which has : a. Responsibility for creating and building the K&TT office or other mechanisms of K&TT. b. The Scholars, Scientists :including 1. under graduate students. 2. Graduate students 3. PhD students. 4. Teachers in the university. 5. Anyone in the university who has the ability to provide a new and innovative idea. 2. The industry: which includes any organization related to the idea that the K&TT generate for commercialization it could be private or governmental organization or another research organization. 30 3. The government: which is responsible for regulations that control and protect the process and its entities including Intellectual property (IPR) protection process. 2.2.7. Factors influencing K&TT process Factors Classified into three related factors 1. Participant’s related factors: These factors are related to the three Participants University, Industry and government in these factors the participants have the strongest effect according to the literature. 2. Content related factors: These factors are related to the type of knowledge or technology which is transferred. 3. Transfer method related factors: These factors are related to the type of transfer channel used to transfer the knowledge or technology. 2.2.8. Participant's related factors 1. Absorptive capacity Cohen and Levinthal (1989, 1990, 1994) introduced The term of absorptive capacity to describe organization necessary capabilities to innovate. (Cohen & Levinthal, 1990)absorptive capacity define as “a firm’s ability to recognize the value of new external knowledge, assimilate it and apply it to commercial ends”, in general the concept of absorptive capacity appears to be applicable to the K&TT field, its processes and parameters (Kodama, 2008), and has been identified to be one of the most important determinants in knowledge and technology transfer (Frank Lerch, 2010). 31 (Goh, 2002)Stated that when encouraging the transfer of knowledge, an organization has to ensure that both participants in the transfer process have the necessary knowledge base (absorptive capacity) to learn, and to understand each other. Therefore, leaders within the organization are important as they have the ability to identify, gather and absorb knowledge and spread it to those in the organization that need it or to use it externally A positive relationship between participants and ease of communication between them eases the absorptive capacity ability of both parties, Organizations absorptive capacity will depend on the absorptive capacities of its individual members; therefore, in order to increase an organization’s absorptive capacity, investment must be made in the individual employee(Goh, 2002). There are four dimensions of absorptive capacity. These have been defined by (Fosfuri & Tribo, 2008) as: • Acquisition: “A firm’s capability to identify relevant external or internal information over the total amount of information that surrounds the firm. That is, the initial step is for a firm to know where the sources of information are”. • Assimilation: “A firm’s routines and processes that allow it to analyze, process, interpret and understand the information obtained from sources”. 32 • Transformation: “A firm’s ability to modify and adapt external knowledge and combine it with existing and internally generated knowledge”. • Exploitation: “A firm’s ability to transform this knowledge into competitive advantage”. 2. Leadership According to (Kotter, 1990)the elements of successful leadership in an organization require the alignment of people, creation of teams and the motivation and inspiration of people to overcome barriers. According to (Goh, 2002), based on research into the critical success factors for implementing knowledge management in small and medium enterprises, leaders within an organization have a major influence on the organizational culture and support structures needed to engage people in sharing their knowledge. Moreover, leaders have an important role in establishing some key conditions required to facilitate knowledge and technology transfer (Goh, 2002) .”For example, effective leadership within an organization can encourage collaboration and sharing of knowledge and information”. More importantly effective leadership can increase the propensity of employees to participate in the transfer of knowledge (Goh, 2002). (Owens , 2012)Showed that active leaders in technology transfer send signals that the process is a valid activity and therefore, encourage others to participate through their leadership skills (Owens , 2012). (Maak & Pless, 2006),in a research into responsible leadership in an organizational setting, 33 agreed with the importance of the role of leadership in knowledge transfer and stated that it was crucial in order to build, cultivate and sustain relationships both inside and outside the organization. (Zheng, 2007) Said that in order to remain competitive in the global marketplace, an organization must make efforts to monitor and influence the flow of knowledge internally, as well as to other organizations. Leadership is developing a vision for the future and strategies for producing the changes needed to achieve that vision (Kotter, 1990). Said that leadership helps bridge the communication gap or information barrier that often is associated with obstacles to the dissemination of knowledge in an organization. However, a high level of trust is needed between leaders and work groups in the organization for people to follow their example and engage in technology transfer, leadership in an organization results in the widespread sharing of and ready access to information and is also one of the key components of successful technology and knowledge transfer (Owens , 2012). 3. Trust Trust is a very complex concept and has many definitions (Rousseau, et al., 1998). In an analysis of trust across specialties such as economics, psychologists and sociologists, were the opinion of them that there is no globally definition of trust. However, an agreement did exist as to its importance in the enabling of collaborative behavior(Gambetta, 1998)promoting adaptive organizational forms such as networking (Miles 34 & Snow, 1992) and (Meyerson, et al., 1996) reducing conflict and facilitating the formation of work groups (Meyerson, et al., 1996). (Rousseau, et al., 1998), defined trust as follows: “Trust is a psychological state comprising the intention to accept vulnerability based on positive expectations of the intentions or behavior of another” (Hong-Park, 2006), in his research into the role of trust in a virtual environment in the ICT sector, stated that while trust is a complex concept, it is also important to note that there is a clear difference between interpersonal and organizational trust. Interpersonal trust is where the trustee is another individual. The target of interpersonal trust is the person, thus it is not based on their position, title, or because they represent an organization. In contrast, organizational trust is when the trustee is an organization not an individual. A key characteristic of trust is that without trust, knowledge and technology transfer is difficult, since the risk and uncertainty is high for the exchange of intellectual capital (Boon & Holmes, 1991); (Handy, 1995); (Gambetta, 1998). (Hong-Park, 2006), also proposed that trust can be increased through socially communication links, where a group of people combine and exchange their knowledge, which as a result generates new knowledge, these socially communication links could be conducted between the participants in the knowledge transfer process to raise the level of confidence between them . 35 According to (Goh, 2002)a high level of trust is required between individuals and work groups in an organization for new knowledge to be shared. Trust is also a relevant factor in the area of leadership as the leaders need to be open in order for individuals within the organization to confide and trust in them and vice versa. Within knowledge-intensive environments knowledge creation is a source of sustainable competitive advantage among practitioners as well as researchers. However, there is caution of sharing knowledge especially when there is a probable threat that others may take advantage of their information. This is particularly relevant to a HEI’s perspective where technology transfer will only occur when academic faculty and representatives from business and industry work together to share their knowledge (Cunningham & Harvey, 2004). Trust between academic faculty and industry is needed to find mechanisms to manage the inherent conflict between openness, the features of the world of academia and the privacy problem that belongs to the industrial sector. However, because of the contrasting missions and cultures of industry and HIEs, they tend not to work together as collaboration partners. (Sanchez & Tejedor, 1995), following research into university-industry relationships in Spain, it found that industry managers rated their relationship with HEIs of little benefit due to the hinder impact of the cultural barrier and the distrust between the two parties. (Lambert, 2003). 36 Trust between the two parties therefore, is hard to implement as HEIs and industry often operate on different timescales, have different objectives to achieve and have a different approaches. (Elmuti, et al., 2005)Said that finding the suitable balance for satisfying both universities and industrial sector is a significant challenge, And trust is essential for technology and knowledge to be effectively transferred between organizations and also facilitates collaborations. As mentioned before by (Goh, 2002), an organization that has a culture that promotes trust amongst its employees will find it easier to transfer knowledge Furthermore, leaders within an organization and who are trusted possess the ability to spread knowledge to organizational employees and engage them in knowledge and technology transfer activities(Owens , 2012). 4. Collaboration Research has shown that industry-university collaboration usually takes place within four important components: research support, cooperative research, knowledge transfer and technology transfer, with the two most important components being knowledge and technology transfer (Santoro, 2000)Knowledge transfer activities are usually seen as a good foundation for future collaborations between organizations. Technology transfer aims to integrate university-driven research into applied research initiatives for the development and commercialization of new processes and products. 37 (Goh, 2002)Stressed that a strong culture of collaboration had to exist in an organization, in order for technology and knowledge to be transferred effectively. Moreover confirm that organizations that promoted active collaboration amongst its employees with external parties, shows that was a vital action for other employees of the organizationto encourage those individuals to participate in the collaboration process, trust amongst individuals is essential for collaboration to happen. As it will increase the tendency to collaborate and share relevant knowledge and technology. (Goh, 2002). However, establishing a collaborative environment in an organization will not improve knowledge and technology transfer only, it is also a need to encourage a culture of problem seeking and problem solving. (Goh, 2002) A strong culture with high trust and a collaborative environment will have a positive influence on knowledge and technology transfer activities amongst organizations. This culture can significantly increase the tendency of an organization to share knowledge and technology, freely with each other (Goh, 2002). Based on research by (Schartinger, et al., 2001), into the relationships between universities and firms in Austria, it was found that organizations follow policies that encourage collaboration with HEIs. A possible motivation for collaborating with universities is the access to knowledge and technological capabilities, and also argued that access to state of the art 38 science and complementary know how, outsourcing of R&D and cost reduction as well as access to research networks were motivators for firms to engage in collaborations with universities. Universities, on the other hand collaborate with industry for various different reasons which include access to scientific resources, the exposure of students to practical problems and the potential employment opportunities for graduates ( Schartinger et al., 2001). 5. Support Structure Organizational capability refers to innovating and reshaping internal resources (Hawawini, 2004),Structural organization of the university is a factor affecting new technology designing. Generally, organizational structure of a university should be homogeneous to new technology and respond its needs (Trafdar, 2006). To facilitate knowledge flow, research centers should design structures and systems by which one can generate, aggregate, integrate, disseminate, and manage the knowledge effectively. (Chen & Huang, 2007)and (Pertusa-Ortega, et al., 2010)have determined the organizational structure as the critical factor in affecting knowledge transfer process and innovation in companies. Most researches on organizational theory confirm that organizational structure plays a vital role in the capability of an organization to adapt, create and integrate knowledge and innovation in the organization(Chen & Huang, 2007). Some authors claim that adaptation 39 between organizational knowledge and structure can achieve flexibility and efficiency of competitive environments is very vital (Liao & And Wu, 2010). (Goh, 2002)found that the appropriate infrastructure of the organization as an important factor in effective knowledge transfer to reinforce and provide support structure. According to (Szulanski, 2000) knowledge can become sticky in organizations that do not have proper support structures to ensure its dissemination. Even if knowledge is freely available and disseminated within the organization, the employees must have the necessary skills to be able to apply the information to avoid the presence of knowledge stickiness (Szulanski, 1996). A solution to this would be to increase horizontal communication flows. This can take many forms and may take time to accomplish, one approach is to encourage cross functional teams and teamwork in an organization. Therefore, leaders within the organization should facilitate the introduction of networking and teamwork amongst the employees in the organization and encourage the effective transfer of knowledge. This encourages individuals to begin learning and communicating horizontally to create a support culture for knowledge transfer, in research into the ability of an organization to manage knowledge through the utilization of knowledge generation and transfer, 40 measurement and reward systems can play a critical role in encouraging knowledge transfer.(Goh, 2002). (Siegel, et al., 2003) believe that academic executives in US universities should focus on five organizational and managerial factors in order to grow an entrepreneurship and commercialization climate, They include developing an awarding system to expand technology transfer cooperation, modifying the ways of employing personnel in technology transfer offices, devising flexible academic policies to facilitate academic technology transfer, devoting more resources to technology transfer, and removing cultural and informational barriers that prevent knowledge and technology transfer. (JAFARI, et al., 2014) 6. Motivation Motivation include the incentives that enable the individuals and the organizations to recognize the importance of the knowledge and technology transfer activities. The level of participation in knowledge and technology depending on these motivations and could be ranged from high to low. Moreover, this participation could be affected by factors such as the reward system in the culture of the organization. This motivation factor becomes critical as we move up in knowledge and technology transfer modes (from Level I to Level IV), Sung and Gibson divided the knowledge and technology transfer process into four levels Creation, Sharing, Implementation and Commercialization.(Sung & Gibson , 2010). 41 In sections 2.1.1 and 2.1.2, the several motivations for both industry and university to engage in collaboration was shown, to sum up these motivations, among the most important for the university was the possibility to gain additional funding for laboratory equipment and research assistants, as well as, the possibility to test existing theory in practice and get insight and clarification into the scientists own research. From the industry's side, it was the possibility to gain access to the university’s laboratories and scientists’ knowledge, and the possibility to receive help on research in technological areas for which the organization does not possess the necessary in-house competences in the aim of rise the revenue, increase the reputation, market share and among other reasons to enhance the organization position. (Poyago-Theotoky, et al., 2002)In a research into the potential disadvantages to the rise in university-industry partnerships, added that collaboration between university- industry depends on the motivations of both parties 7. Distance Some authors call it “Norm distance “, distance here means the physical and cultural closeness, because of the IC Trepid development cultural differences take a place between parties, and it's more important than the geographical separation between the parties, cultural similarity/ dissimilarity is an important indicator that could facilitate or discourage the 42 K&TT collaboration process, the more parties understand the values, attitudes, and ways of doing things with each other, the greater the chance of successful transfer of knowledge and technology. This distance factor becomes critical as we move up in knowledge and technology transfer from the creation to commercialization. (Sung & Gibson , 2010). (Sanchez & Tejedor, 1995) Stated the different cultural missions of industry and academia equated to academics valuing their freedom. This incongruence was given further credence by (Graff, Heiman, Zilberman, Castillo and Parker, 2002) who stated that HEIs faculty value academic freedom and publication of their research. The industrial sectors are motivated by a clear product driven focus and a culture that ensure secrecy and protection through the application of patents (Nelson, 2001). 8. Knowledge and Technology capabilities In the literature, many authors considered the existence of technology- related basic knowledge ( technological knowledge, technical and organizational skills and parties tacit knowledge ) is important for successful technology and knowledge transfer such as (Bishop, et al., 2011),(Mu, et al., 2010),(Pertusa-Ortega, et al., 2010), and (Kodama, 2008). 43 It’s essential to minimize the cultural differences and the knowledge gab between the university as a knowledge and technology generator and the industry as a knowledge and technology manufacturer through interactions and knowledge sharing, to achieve that both industry and universities must have the necessary knowledge and technological capabilities. (Wang & Lu, 2007). (Walsh, 2002) defined technological capability as “technological inventions and being aware of technological future needs”. (Santoro & Bierly, 2006) agreed that technology transfer would be increased if the technological capabilities of both sender and receiver are correlating . Some authors believe that organizational technological and knowledge capabilities will be increased by learning methods like internal R&D, and technical training(Santoro & Bierly, 2006). (Wang, 2004), made another research about technological and knowledge capabilities and found that high technological and knowledge capability generate high capacity to utilize experts by organization, high capacity to predict technological changes, the capability of utilizing new technologies in resolving internal problems and improving new technological standards to measure technological capability, this will increase the ability and confidence to share these technology and knowledge . (Wang, 2004). 44 Knowledge capability is an important factor in knowledge and technology transfer, Knowledge capability is “the ability of a company to recognize the value of new external information and to integrate it with internal organizational knowledge” (Bishop, et al., 2011). Knowledge capability includes the abilities of acquiring and merging the knowledge and utilizing it in an organization, and To generate new knowledge in the innovation process, Many authors believe that a company’s innovation capability has a close relationship with its ability in gaining benefits from technology and knowledge transfer, and in combine it with other elements of internal knowledge.(Herrera, et al., 2010). Such indicators are used to have the ability to conceive the value of new knowledge and information, to attract new knowledge in organizational current knowledge treasure, to integrate new knowledge with existing organizational knowledge, to use organizational knowledge for business purposes, to convert internal accumulated experience into applied business knowledge, to convert implicit and explicit knowledge into job procedures and norms, and to use current organizational knowledge to generate new knowledge to measure firms’ learning and knowledge (Chen & Huang, 2009 ). Moreover, the form of the knowledge and technology which transferring is important,(Cummings & Teng, 2003), found that the form of the 45 knowledge to be transferred, play a critical role in its transferability. (Cummings & Teng, 2003). 9. Openness Present studies have confirmed that adoption of open innovation principles minimize the time and cost to develop and initiate innovations, and improves the innovativeness of the end solution and organizational transfer of technology and knowledge (Gassmann, et al., 2010). The measures of openness among current studies are based on standards such as partner characteristics, permeability of limits, and extent of usage of external sources of knowledge (extent of exploitation of external sources by acquisitions and extent of internal technology licensing) (Gianiodis, et al., 2010). (Lazzarotti, et al., 2010) use two variables for representing the degree of openness, the number and type of partners (partner variety), and the number and type of phases of the innovation process open to external contributions (innovation phase variety). (Laursen & Salter, 2006) Usedan additional measure intensity of collaboration to measure openness. Intensity of collaboration is defined as “the extent of usage of an external knowledge source by the focal 46 firm” and is measured in terms of the contributions provided by that external source. They measure the ‘depth’ of the collaboration intensity. 10. Intellectual property A property can be defined as “a resource with some form of assigned ownership, and an intellectual property is then a property of intellectual or intangible character”, An intellectual property rights (IPR) is a legally placed rights created and used to appoint ownership to intellectual resources such as knowledge, technologies, brand names, and other types of intellectuals, The IPRs includes patent rights, copyrights, design rights, trademark rights, trade secret rights, and some other types of ancillary rights. IPRs are granted mainly to stimulate investment in invention and commercialization of new intellectual resources in order to improve the innovations of various kinds to the benefit of consumer and society in general. However, IPRs have received criticism not only for creating monopoly, but more recently also for decreases innovativeness due to their increasingly more exclusivist function, nevertheless various IPRs laws have become adopted more in world-wide. (Granstrand & Holgersson, 2015). Strong IPRs protection may encourage firms to produce and sell technologically advanced goods. Surveys of multinational managers suggest that technology transfer is sensitive to the strength of IPRs protection, a stronger IPR environment with good patent protection, the 47 Companies can prevent the competition Companies from using the patented ingredients of its knowledge and technology. (Lee & E, 1996). 2.2.9. Content related factors: 1. Innovation Technology or knowledge only has value when it is commercialized. There are prolific innovations with relatively few business models that could capture potential value of the new knowledge or technology. A firm can capture value from innovation in the following ways: using technology or knowledge in its existing business, transfer the technology or knowledge to other organizations, and launching a new ventures that uses the knowledge or technology. (Chesbrough, 2003) In the historical integrated researches, new technologies were not explored beyond implementation in the firm’s core business. Whereas open innovation model offered a new concept of applying it to different markets and therefore, optimizing it for the betterment. The benefits of open innovation is firstly, the ownership of the IP is kept by the innovator generatingextra revenue by licensing it to other organizations for their use, and secondly, other firms can access the IP at a cost lower than they would otherwise have afford had they acquired full ownership of it. (Chesbrough, 2003). 48 2.2.10. Transfer method related factors 1. Communication Communication refers to “the degree to which a medium is able to efficiently and accurately transfer task-relevant information”, negative communications have the capacity to target many receptors while interactive communications encourage interpersonal communication in terms of fast, focused feedback, better chance of knowledge and technology transfer (Gibson & Smilor , 1991), passive links have the capacity to target many receptors at low cost, but the sender is often unaware of whether and how the receptors receive and utilize the transferred knowledge or technology. Such passive linkages are representative of creation mode of knowledge and technology transfer . Interactive transfer links are defined as being person-to-person media-rich interactions. This mode of transfer relates to levels implementation and commercialization. (Sung & Gibson , 2010). Some authors like to call it “Relational Capability” which indicates organization ability to communicate with others such as customers, supportive organizations and scientific centers, suppliers and rivals (Fontana et al, 2006). 49 Chapter Three Methodology 3.1 Introduction This chapter is the methodology part that discusses research data collection techniques, building, and analysis procedures in more depth. This research doesn’t aim to find the relationships or correlations between a set of factors that have a statistical data or historical data to be analyzed, itq1 is designed to explore and investigate the factors that affect the K&TT process and to assess the extent of the use of these factors in Palestine, so this research belongs to the Exploratory Research type. Exploratory Research: conducted when not much information is available about the situation or about how the same problem were solved in the past (Sekaran & Bougie, 2010). Furthermore, this type of research undertaken when the problem is complex or not well known. In such cases, researches needs to do extensive preliminary work to define, understand, or gain familiarity with the phenomena before designing or developing a comprehensive model to investigate and assess this phenomena. Extensive interviews with many expert people in the field of the study might have to be performed(Yin, 1994), (Sekaran & Bougie, 2010). Exploratory research usually generate a qualitative data in from of words not numbers as in the quantitative data which generate a statistical data, 50 this research will adopt the qualitative approach in data collection and analysis . Qualitative research: is best applicable to explore the research problem and developing an understanding of the circumstantial of a central phenomenon (Creswell, 2012). According to (Rajasekar, et al., 2013), the characteristics of qualitative approach are marked as follows: descriptive, non-numerical, cannot be graphed, investigates the how and why of decision making, and explanatory research. So, the qualitative research conducted to find out the opinion, attitude, feeling, and behaviour of individual toward an institution or toward a particular subject by using such diverse techniques as: in depth interviews, sentence completion test, story completion test, word associated test, case study, focus groups, structured observation and etc. (Greener, 2008). To capture all data needed to understand the problem well and extract what needed to answer the research questions we must include all participants in the Technology and transfer process according to their role in the process. Figure 3- 1: diagram shows each participant and its role. 51 3.2 Data collection methods Each participant has its own method of data collection according to what does the research want to test and the role of the participant in the K&TT process Table (3-1)summarizes the data collection method for each participant, the explination of each method comes later. Table 3- 1 : data collection method for each participant in the K&TT collaboration process Participant Researcher University Industry Government Data collection method Questionnaire Interview Interview Interview 3.2.1 University and industry Interviews As a main participants in the K&TT process Interviews selected for better understanding the problem and because K&TT collaborations need specialists in field, more information can be obtained, resistance to provide information will be limited, there is greater flexibility under this method as the opportunity to restructure questions is always there, observation method can be applied to recording verbal answers to various questions, samples can be controlled more effectively, non-response generally remains very low (Kothari, 2004) Semi-structured open ended interviews are designed to let the interviewee have the chance to express them self and will explain the answer and more information could be gathered. 3.2.2 Sample size of universities: All systematic universities in the west bank will be included and they are . 52 Table 3- 2 : Universities included in the study 1. An-Najah National University 2. Birzeit University 3. Palestine Polytechnic University 4. Hebron University 5. Al-Quds University 6. The Arab American University 7. Bethlehem University 8. Palestine Technical University-Kadoori 3.2.3. Sample size of the Industry Not any company could be included in the research because not all companies have the financial position required toengagein the K&TT process as mentioned in previous the role of the industry is to provide the necessary fund to gain the benefits later. how to determine the companies with the right financial position that is a hard task because you need to contact each company and ask them and not all companies will do so because of the confidentiality of such information and it is hard to read all companies Annual Financial Reportfor each company and determine wither its match or not . Palestinian Industry is divided into industrial unionseach union includes most of the industrial sector companies and industrial unionsare: 1. Union of Agricultural Societies 2. Union of Chemical Industries 3. Union of Food Industry 53 4. Union of Leather Industries 5. Union of wood and furniture industries 6. Union of metal and engineering industries 7. Union of Paper Industries 8. Union of Pharmaceutical Industries 9. Union of Plastic Industries 10. Union of Stone and Marble Industry 11. Union of Textile Industries 12. Union of communications and information technology companies 13. Logistic industry. These Unions were contacted and asked to nominatethe companies which have the financial position that enable it to engage in the K&TT collaboration process and the result is shown in table (3-3). 54 Table 3- 3 : companies nominated by the unions of industries industry number of companies registered in General Union of PalestinianIndustries Companies nominated by the union Agricultural Industry 46 3 Chemical Industry 60 12 Food Industry 224 15 Leather Industries 246 8 wood and furniture industries 65 6 metal and engineering industries 120 6 Paper Industries 140 5 Pharmaceutical Industries 19 4 Plastic Industries 105 3 Stone and Marble Industry 56 8 Textile Industries 700 3 communication and information technology companies 88 9 Logistic industry 16 3 1885 85 85 companies were selected to interview, this number of companies is a sign for us to understand that from 1885 company registered only 85 company are nominated as a qualified one to engage in the K&TT collaboration process, this indicate that the Palestinian industry in weak situation to support the socio-economic system . 3.2.4. University and Industry Interview design Interview is one of methods used for collecting data, through conducting a purposeful discussion between the researcher and others, So, when researcher exchange views with one or more participants by asking them general open or ended questions and then recording their answers, this 55 termed a qualitative interview,(Creswell, 2012) that can be carried out face-to-face, via telephone, via the medium of the computer, or online (Sekaran & Bougie, 2010). Interviews have three main types, it may be categorized as follows:  Unstructured interviews: Are informal interviews, usually carried out to get on definite ideas, that may or not important and relevant to particular problem situations (Sekaran & Bougie, 2010)  Semi-structured interviews: This kind of interviews are non- standardized, in which the researcher will have some questions and themes listed to be covered, beside that researcher may omit or add additional questions to explore the research objectives.(Saunders, et al., 2009). Structured interviews: In which, participants are asked clear questions in a consistent way (Greener, 2008)in order to explore more in-depth information about the specific problem of interest (Sekaran & Bougie, 2010) . In this research, we used semi-structured interview as an exploratory tool, in order to answer the first question. So, we conducted face-to-face and telephone interviews with the K&TT specialist or his/her represent or in targeted universities and companies in the industry, conducted telephone interviews in some cases because these universities and companies are 56 sited away from each other, in addition to being distributed in the West Bank and there was a need for additional information besides the research time was limited. As the primary tool to collect the data from the most important parties which are the industry and universities the interview must cover all factors that mentioned in the theoretical part of the study Table (3- 4) summarize the factor and its determinants, the source of these determinants and the number of question related to it . Table 3- 4 : The factors and its determinants and which question designed to measure it Factor Determined by Source Questions A Absorptive capacity Acquisition (Fosfuri & Tribo, 2008) 1 Assimilation 2 Transformation 3+4 Exploitation 5 B Leadership Initiative (Kotter, 1990) 6 Leading projects to success 7+8+9 C Trust Direct questions 10 11 + 12 D Collaboration Number of collaborations (Goh, 2002) 13 +14 Collaborative environment 15 Knowledge sharing 16 E Support structure Internal trend to K&TT (JAFARI, et al., 2014) 17+18 Needed infrastructure (Goh, 2002) 19 employees necessary skills (Szulanski, 1996) 20 Respond to K&TT (Trafdar, 2006) 21 F Motivation Incentives (Sung & Gibson , 2010) 22 + 23 G Communication Links (Sung & Gibson ) 24+25 H Distance Physical distance (Sung & Gibson , 2010) 26 57 Cultural distance (Sung & Gibson , 2010) 27+28 I Knowledge and technological capability Internal R&D (Santoro & Bierly, 2006) 29 Skills (Barton,2008) 30 +31 +32 Training (Santoro & Bierly, 2006) 33 +34 Ability to transfer (Santoro & Bierly, 2006) 35 J Openness partner variety (Lazzarotti, et al., 2010) 36+37+38 innovation phase variety (Lazzarotti, et al., 2010) 39 Intensity of collaboration (Laursen & Salter, 2006) 40 K Obstacles Direct questions 41+42 3.2.5. Quality of the Research Tool To ensure the Interview quality, we conduct several procedures to test the interview questions: 1. Supervisor discussion After designing the questions, the questions discussed with Dr. Yahiya Saleh the supervisor of this research, also the coordinator of the step project for UIC in Palestine, we reviewed the English Version of the Questionnaire to ensure it would achieve the goals of the research, Adjustments were made. 2. Experts in filed review : The questions were send to four experts in the field of UIC and K&TT, notes took into account their comments on the interview contents, format, 58 and structure that have contributed in establishing content validity and enabling us made necessary amendments earlier to pilot testing, adjustments were made. 3. Pilot study : Before using the interview to collect data, pilot test was conducted to refine and improve the in terviewquestions. In this case, respondents answering the questions without facing any problems in understanding and recording data correctly. (Saunders, et al., 2009)Argued that pilot test will enable researcher to obtain some assessment of the validity and suitability of the questions, and the reliability of the collected data. Moreover, pilot test as (Bell, 2005) suggested has enabled us to find out: the time that the interview took to complete, the clarity of all instructions, the questions that were unclear or ambiguous, the clarity and the attractiveness of the interview layout, and if there were any other comments. The number of participants I could choose for a pilot test should be at least 10 to be sufficient to include any significant differences in research population that may affect responses (Saunders, et al., 2009). After that, I refined the interview, then I chose ten participant from different universities and companies to review the interview with them. 59 Participants made comments on the contents and statements' number of the questions. The comments from all experts, and pilot test participants were discussed with my supervisor. Then adjustment were made and the interview was refined again to be ready for distribution. 3.2.6. Distribution of the interviews: 1. Universities: six universities out of eight universities in West Bank responded to the interview after being contacted and determined a face to face interview, three of them were made on phone, the interview questions were sent before and discussed briefly on phone and a full discussion were made in the meeting, experts left to talk freely and express themselves to formulate the answers in a good way. 2. Industry : as shown in table (3-5) 85 company in deferent types of industry nominated to have the necessary competences and capabilities to engage in the K&TT process table (3-5) shows the responses summary : 60 Table 3- 5 : Summary of companies’ number and responses industry Companies nominated by the union Companies respond to the interview Response Rate (%) Agricultural Industry 3 2 66.6 Chemical Industry 12 7 58.3 Food Industry 15 9 60 Leather Industries 8 4 50 wood and furniture industries 6 3 50 metal and engineering industries 6 3 50 Paper Industries 5 3 60 Pharmaceutical Industries 4 2 50 Plastic Industries 3 1 33.3 Stone and Marble Industry 8 4 50 Textile Industries 3 2 66.6 communication and information technology companies 9 5 55.5 Logistic industry 3 1 33.3 85 46 54.1 From the above table, it is obvious that the overall response rate in all types of industry 54.1% the reason of this response rate is the lack of interest among the companies which have a resistance to change their culture or to engage in any outside activities as the researcher understand from the answers of the companies representatives when the researcher contacted them. 3.2.7. Researchers Questionnaire Survey Questionnaire is simple, rapid; and the most widely used for collecting data from a large sample (Saunders, et al., 2009)with less effort and time. So, it's considered as an efficient tool to collect data when the 61 researcher exactly knows what is required and how to test the variables of interest (Sekaran & Bougie, 2010), by using this tool each anonymous respondent must be asked the same set of questions prior to quantitative analysis. The researcher use it as a second tool to evaluate the factors that make the researcher produce a transferable research or project, now after reviewing the theoretical part, it is clear that the researcher must have the necessary technological and knowledge capabilities in the field of K&TT according to (Bishop, et al., 2011), more importantly must have the motivation to produce such type of research according to(Sung & Gibson , 2010), and at last must have the confidence in his/her university and industry to be encouraged and to be confident that he will get the support to achieve success in his/her project or research and to get benefit from it according to (Cunningham and Harvey, 2004). According to that, the researchers asked to evaluate themselves in these factors : 1. Knowledge and technological capabilities : in this part the researcher asked to evaluate him/herself in three important concepts which are the most important concept in the K&TT process, commercialization, Innovation and technology and knowledge transfer, they asked to evaluate the ability to produce a project or research that could be adopted 62 from the industry, also the ability of the research for patent or publication and the relation between the research and the local market. 1. Confidence: two direct questions about the abilities of the universities and industry to support them to achieve success in the research or project 2. Motivation: directly the researchers asked to choose the main motivation of the research that they want to make. Questionnaire was designed with closed questions which allowed respondents to make quick choices among a set of alternatives based on Likert scale, that has helped us in achieving the objectives of this research by providing us with accurate data and results without ambiguous despite the large size of the research population. (Sekaran & Bougie, 2010)Considered all the items in a questionnaire that based on Likert scale. The Questionnaire of this research ended with an open-ended question to invite respondents to comment on topics that might not have been covered adequately, as (Sekaran & Bougie, 2010) suggestedclosed. The first draft of the Questionnaire was designed as the following: - The researcher designed Questionnaire cover, which began with an introduction that consists of: the logo of the researcher university, the title of the research, the purpose of the Questionnaire, the comprehensive definition of K&TT, the promise to participants not to 63 share their information with a third party in order to motivate them to respond to the questions, and then ended the introduction with courteous note that thanking the respondent for spending time in respond to the survey, we cover all of these cover contents according to (Dillman, 2007)suggestions. - Beside the introduction, the first page consists of the first part of questions that related to personal information which elicited such information as gender, the university and faculty that they study or instruct in and the academic stage. - Then we asked the researcher about the main motivation for his/her research or graduate project. - In the third part of the Questionnaire, we set eight questions that evaluate the factors mentioned previously. - We chose odd number (five) of points on the rating scale, which called five Likert-style rating scale to measure the statements in the third part of the Questionnaire with the following anchors: "1" very weak, "2" weak, "3" good, "4" very good, "5" excellent. This rating scale allows respondents to choose the middle phrase "good", when considering an implicitly negative statement about the current situation, which is considered less of a threat than the recognition they do not know (Saunders, et al., 2009). I chose at least two or three statements to cover the meaning of each factor. In addition, the statements did not go beyond 64 the three questions, because more than three statements would be impractical and long. - I took into account, that the statements of the Questionnaire won't exceed 10 words, or not to exceed one full line in print as Horst (1968), and Oppenheim (1986) preferred. - We discussed the first draft of the research Questionnaire with research supervisor Dr. Yhia Saleh. After that, we reviewed the English Version of the Questionnaire to ensure that it would achieve the goals of the research. Adjustments were made. - Then I translated the Questioner’s title, introduction, and all parts statements into Arabic Language because it's the mother language in Palestine. The translation process also reviewed by a translation expert to make sure that the sentences' grammar and syntax in Arabic Version were correctly formulated. - And then, I reviewed again with research supervisor to ensure that the lexical, idiomatic and experiential meaning of all statements in Arabic corresponds to the meaning in English as (Usunier, 1998) also suggested to be taken into account, and to ensure that the translation of the instrument to the local language accurately matches the original language. - A sample of 20 questionnaires were distributed and answered by the researcher and were asked to evaluate the questionnaire in term of 65 language to understand and time to finish, notes from researcher is take into account and modification were made. 3.2.8. Sample size of the researchers inside the university At first we must define the meaning of researchers inside the university again to view how they will selected, the researchers inside the university are: 1. Under graduate students. 2. Graduate students including Master and PhD 3. Academics inside the university. Including all students and academics will take a lot of time in collecting and analyzing the data, this research will focus on the faculties that the output of the research will be closer to the demand of the industry and could produce tangible and intangible products, these faculties are: 1. Faculty of pharmacy. 2. Faculty of science. 3. Faculty of Engineering and Information technology. 4. Faculty of Agriculture and veterinary. 5. Faculty of graduate students. 66 And also academics inside the universities. There is no report that determined the exact number of students will graduate, there is a report that indicates the number of students graduated last year, this report conducted by the ministry of higher Education, table (3-6) summaries these numbers and the sample size needed to gain valid and reliable result from the study: 67 Table 3- 6 : Sample size needed for each category of the researchers Universities UNI 1 UNI 2 UNI 3 UNI 4 UNI 5 UNI 6 UNI 7 UNI 8 Sum Faculty of pharmacy Number 239 0 0 0 122 0 0 0 361 % from population 3.4 0 0 0 2 0 0 0 5 Sample 13 0 0 0 6 0 0 0 19 Faculty of science Number 452 123 84 89 441 94 103 19 1405 % from population 6.5 1.7 1 1 6 1 1 0 20 Sample 24 7 4 5 23 5 5 1 74 Faculty of Eng. And IT Number 1219 443 422 73 139 166 0 348 2810 % from population 18 6 6 1 2 2 0 5 41 Sample 65 23 22 4 7 9 0 18 149 Faculty of Agri. and vete. Number 71 0 0 138 0 0 0 0 209 % from population 1 0 0 2 0 0 0 0 3 Sample 4 0 0 7 0 0 0 0 11 Faculty of grad. Stud. Number 105 54 18 0 42 0 11 0 230 % from population 2 1 0 0 1 0 0 0 3 Sample 6 3 1 0 2 0 1 0 12 Academics Number 552 340 84 166 398 152 102 63 1857 % from population 8 5 1 2 6 2 1 1 27 Sample 29 18 4 9 21 8 5 3 98 Sum 140 51 32 25 60 22 11 23 364 68 Table 3- 7 : sample size needed Population 6872 Confidence Level 0.95 Confidence Interval 5 Sample size needed 364 In surveys' situation and other statistical methods, it is necessary for researchers to determine the minimum sample size required to generalize the results on the population based on three main elements according to (Saunders, et al., 2009) they are as follows: 1- The confidence level: which represent the certainty level in which the characteristics of data collected by researchers will represent the characteristics of whole population. Confidence denotes how the researchers are certain that their estimates will really hold true for the targeted population (Sekaran & Bougie, 2010). 2- The margin of error to be tolerated (confidence interval): It represents the accuracy required for any researchers' esti