Technology Transfer
Since its inception in january 1972, the Technology Consultancy Centre (TCC) of the Kwame Nkrumah University of science and Technology (KNUST), Kumasi, Ghana, hundreads of artisans and small business to improve their operstions be assisted, and thousands of other companies have copied his innovations. By this long experience of grassroots technology transfer to the industries concerned have some basics that can be useful to others in similar work in Africa and other parts of the third world.
1. The effort must enterpreneur:
Many promising ideas developed on university campuses do not commercial application because they are not to the imagination of a local enterpreneur. The projects that the fastest in the local economy are taking off that provided by a local craft or enterpreneur who has seen a chance on the market for a enw or improved product brought to the university must be answered. To this end, University consultancy centres open and inviting to the general public and willing to discuss each proposition be brought to their attention. Some possible scientific ideas and the people promoting unhealthy accordingly led them, but these clients know the real market and under their suggestions will be found that innovations that can make an important economic consequences, many jobs.
2. Engineers must take the lead:
Each innovation in production a new machine, and making machines, the company engineers. From the start that the TCC established its own technical workshop to produce the plants necessary for processing the SOAP, caustic soda, insecticide, paper glue, animal feed and other products formulated by academics of entrepreneur clients. Without this support, of engineering, production would never have become an economic reality. unfortunately, the manufacture of the plant was seen as much less profitable than its operation, and the transfer of plant making private engineering workshops enterpreneurs, but when they did some were very successful.
3. The effort to be urban-based:
Most development organisations want to help the poorest people in the rural areas and the urban population is often seen as less better off and deserves support. Basic technical progress is only possible in urban centres where good electricity supply and other essential services small workshops to assemble the means of production for the production of plants and equipment for agriculture, storage periods and craft industries in the rural areas. Rural areas in a country like Ghana can best be helped by the first help the urban-based engineering industry. Analysis of the experience of TCC in kumasi shows that any employee who in an urban engineering company, by producing machines such as corn mills, cassava graters, table saws and wood-turning lathes, morethan 10 jobs a year in rural industries can generate.
4. Is the profit that the transfer of technology. This may seen obvious, but it often forgotten or overlooked by academics. Enterpreneurs are in business to make a profit, and although they also much proud pioneers of a new product or process, they are unlikely to invest in a new project, unless they see realistic prospect for achiveing a good return. Academic advisors may be disappointed when a client in product rent before the final refinement is complete but company at a different time sacle to campus life and when it comes to marketing, the customer is always right.
5. For each pioneer there are hundred copiers:
It is easy for donors in the area of economic development to be overwhelmed by the scale of the problem. Helping customers on the basis of one-by-one may seem to be only a drop in the ocean of need for economic growth and job creation. To compensate for this daunting thought, one should not forget that, once a new idea to make money is seen many other entrepreneurs will hurry to copy the innovator. Tales from Kumasi relate how a copier was often more successful than the innovator, sometimes because the Copier saw a simpler solution than that provided by the University for the original client.
6. A number of services must be available:
Lack of machine tools is just one of a number of critical constraints on grassroots industrial development. other common constraints include lack of land, accomodation, electricity and water supply workshop, raw materials stocks and working capital.Technology transfer projects should be designed for help with removing a wide range of such restrictions.
It may seem that some, such as agriculture and public services, can only be provided by Governments, but there are many cases registered by the TCC in which the University was able to help delivery even these necessities. For example, in the Suame Magazine in Kumasi TCC could connect with a much better electricity supply 27,000 craftsmen, and its influence to help the magazine become a real object, so guaranteeing land rights to the entire community.
It may seem that some, such as agriculture and public services, can only be provided by Governments, but there are many cases registered by the TCC in which the University was able to help delivery even these necessities. For example, in the Suame Magazine in Kumasi TCC could connect with a much better electricity supply 27,000 craftsmen, and its influence to help the magazine become a real object, so guaranteeing land rights to the entire community.
7. Critical constraints must be identified:
The TCC's customers were business owners and entrepreneurs are people who are motivated to find solutions for most of their own problems. In the initial stages of interaction with a customer, suggestions have been made and the follow-up of the client is checked.
The client that listens to advice to solve his own problem and goes away to his entrepreneurial credentials. In the early days of the TCC took this process typically about two years. Then, if the client had succeeded, but the opinion a limitation still hampered the implementation of an innovation, more practical help, whether it was the delivery of a machine tool, workshop accommodation or whatever.
The client that listens to advice to solve his own problem and goes away to his entrepreneurial credentials. In the early days of the TCC took this process typically about two years. Then, if the client had succeeded, but the opinion a limitation still hampered the implementation of an innovation, more practical help, whether it was the delivery of a machine tool, workshop accommodation or whatever.
8. Avoid doing too much:
This is the product of principles 7 and 8. Analysis of TCC technology transfer projects has shown that sometimes failures occurred too much because too much help was given to clients. This was often the result of good intentions.
For example, the attempt to help the first female lathe turner to her own atelier failed because the client less strict than her male peers was tested and do not have the necessary enterpreneurial skills. Determine how many and what kind of help to clients required adult judgment based on years of experience. For this reason, in the free Project ITTU managers were trained by means of a long program of a gradual expansion of areas of responsibility.
For example, the attempt to help the first female lathe turner to her own atelier failed because the client less strict than her male peers was tested and do not have the necessary enterpreneurial skills. Determine how many and what kind of help to clients required adult judgment based on years of experience. For this reason, in the free Project ITTU managers were trained by means of a long program of a gradual expansion of areas of responsibility.
9. The promotion of a community spirit:
After TCC in working for a group of successful clients the formation of a TCC Clients Association proposed ten years had been. The goal was to promote their companies through cooperation with each other and with the University. Along with the TCC and other faculties of the Ghana Association can make the KNUST mounted the exhibition at the British Council compound in Accra in October 1983. Later, by region, such as customers similar associations came into force, ITTUs were founded, modeled on the prototype in Kumasi. Members of these associations helped the program in many ways, including the provision of training for students, workshop accommodation for new qualified masters and participation in seminars, workshops and exhibitions. In this way, repaid the community for clients in good measure the assistance that they had received of the University.