iii. Academics (universities, colleges)

1. Technology transfer from the government sector to the private sector: Generally

government sector gets good financial support from the government in the form of

grants. It becomes essential that this technology should reach the mass population.

Technology developed transferred to private sector also improves the government

and private sector associations. It has two advantages:

a. The government labs would get supplementary financial support and inflow of

funds to the institutions funded by the government. It would decrease the

economic burden on governments.

b. The private sector firm would gain the right to technology at a moderately lower

cost. It will make the private sector in a position to make the technology available

to masses.

2. Technology transfer between private sectors of the same country: This is an

important activity due to retention of intellectual capital. This type of technology

transfer may be due to several reasons like incapacity to commercialize the

technology, financial barriers, barriers in the distribution network, and human

resources scarcity, etc. In this case, the developer would get the price of technology

from the absorber that would, in the end, be used to build R&D capacity of the

developer. This tendency would be usually seen when a company is comparatively

small and is in its developmental stage.

3. Between private sector firms of different countries: In this, technology transfer is

from one country to another country. This trend of technology transfer is beneficial

to the developing countries. Before initialising this type of technology transfer, the

economic impact of the transfer of technology on developing countries should be

assessed. The developer would get the incentives, whereas the absorber would get

access to technology new to its country. The absorber can exploit the technology for

economic as well as social well being for people of its country. However, technology

seekers in developing countries face several barriers when tin commercial dealings

with technology holders in developed countries. For example, in the pharmaceutical

sector, the price that has to be given to acquire is huge and companies in developing

countries cannot pay this price to technology developer for acquiring technology.