Enablers and barriers to technology transfer

What is this report about?

This report describes the barriers and enablers to technology transfer that are currently recognised in the literature as well as more recent evidence of the problems in relation to human factors research.

What problem does the report address?

A lot of reports are written about research carried out however a lot of the contents and ideas of these reports do not get utilised. The ideas stay within the report. To enable these ideas to be exploited the barriers that are preventing this need to be identified.

What is the benefit of this work?

The work will identify barriers to technology transfer as well as identifying particular problems within human factors.

Who should take note of it?

Anyone in a position of HFI responsibility

What is the report's status?

Unclassified

What are the main issues addressed in the report?

The issues addressed in this research programme were the barriers and enablers to technology transfer as identified in the literature and the barriers that are currently causing problems elicited from interviews with human factors personnel.

What are the findings?

The main conclusions were:

Numerous barriers identified by interviewees the majority of which support the literature.
Communication was a key issue in both literature and interviews in preventing positive pull through.
The interviews highlighted key issues for human factors especially with regard to defence, e.g. the problems caused by the rotation of personnel.

Why bother?

A lot of money is spent on research which doesn't get pulled through. To ensure that more research is exploited the barriers which guarantee that research ‘stays on the shelf' needs to be identified before they can be overcome. In breaking down these barriers more research can be utilised.