5.2.Technology transfer is dependent on finding a potential user who has both a corporate need and sufficient funds for development. Technology transfer involves an academic researcher having a potentially commercial idea and wanting an industrial lab to support further work, or the university having patented an invention and wanting to license or sell it. The issue here becomes how to get someone in a corporation interested enough to free up corporate funds to buy it. The rest of this discussion will be directed to how to make technology transfer work. Most people feel that the world outside of science is far harder to deal with than science itself.
Nature is at least consistent.
When selling an idea, the problems which can prevent success are at least as frequently non-technical as scientifically objective. We will discuss some of them now. It is possible to be led astray by a rational analysis of what should happen next. This is the stage at which a large number of factors become of critical importance. Many of them are not technical.