Describe Trends and Issues in Technology Transfer.
The trends in technology transfer:
Trade in technology has expanded tremendously because of growing importance of up-to-date modern technology. The number of technological collaboration agreements have increased manifold.
According to Mischael Porter, technological change is one of the principal drivers of competition. According to Gorden Pearson innovation is the key weapon in achieving a sustaining competitive advantage. Technological change by a firm will lead to a sustainable competitive advantage because technological change lowers cost or enhances differentiation and provides first mover advantages. Today, every TNC is busy in exploiting first mover advantage in the area of technology.
Technological advances have tremendously fostered globalization. Technology has in. fact been a very important factor of globalization. Several technological developments have become a compelling reason for internationalization. The research and development activities of the firms are also getting globalize since TNCs have established their research and development units in various countries.
Technology has created revolution not only in industrial sector, but in agricultural and services sector also.
Technological orientation of a company has been influenced by the customer needs and expectations. If the customers are highly demanding companies would be compelled to be innovative.
Competition compels the adoption of the best technology and constant endeavor to innovate. Absence of competition is a major reason for the technological backwardness of many countries.
There have been a growing tendency for companies to seek increase governmental protection of intellectual property rights. The, governments of many countries have build stricter intellectual property right regimes through unilateral action and multilateral agreements.
A few developing countries are increasing their research and development expenditure.
The issues in technology transfer:
The most important issue in technology transfer is the proprietorial rights of the owner of technology. Many countries have unilaterally passed the laws to protect proprietorial rights of technology. Similarly, there are multilateral agreements, such laws and agreements have become obstacles to the national development of technology.
Passing of laws protecting the owner of technology has not yielded good results and there are a large number of cases of violation of proprietorial regimes. There is a growing tendency for retaliation/ cross retaliation which has adversely affected the international business transactions.
During the last two decades, many countries have liberalized their economies to attract foreign direct investment i.e. TNCs. A large of number of TNCs have made their operations global. This has increased vulnerability of a large number of developing countries.
TRIPs has laid down more comprehensive provisions for the protection of intellectual property rights. TRIPs has provided more stringent conditions and stronger protection to agriculture and services sector besides manufacturing sector including bio technological inventions and micro-organisms. This has raised a large number of complex issues.
