Background: Particularly during and after research projects, technology transfer into practice plays an important role for academia to get technologies into use and for industry to improve their development. Objective: Our goal was to gain more and current knowledge about how technology transfer from software engineering (SE) research into industrial practice is accomplished best and how to measure the effectiveness of this transfer. Method: We conducted a study in the context of two German research projects, covering many different organizations from industry and academia. Results: This paper presents the design of the study and the survey performed. After introducing the concept of technology transfer we used and adapted, we present preliminary results. Conclusions: We observed that traditional means such as meetings or workshops are still the most widely used mediums for technology transfer in SE. We also discovered that, even though the duration of transfer depends on the object being transferred, the average duration is three years, which is far less than previously published (~18 years).

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BRIDIGING THE GAP: SE Technology Transfer into Practice Study Design and Preliminary Results
Philipp Diebold, Antonio Vetrò
8th International Symposium on Empirical Software Engineering and Measurement
19 September 2014 - Torino, Italy

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Defintion Technology Transfer
Technology Transfer (TT) is defined as
“the process sharing knowledge, machines, equipment, methods, techniques, processes, […]
from transferors to transferees, who will exploit the technology into new products, processes, applications, and business models” [1]
[1] Teece, D.J. 1997. Technology transfer by multinational firms: The resource cost of transferring technological know-how. In Economics Journal, 242-261

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Motivation

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Study Goal
Characterize the TT of SE objects with
respect to the current state of the practice
(SG1), the transfer mediums used (SG2), and
improvements or future transfer trends
(SG3) from the industry and researcher perspective within SE

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Study Design Survey Structure
Start
Demographics
Current State
of Transfer
Medium Assessment
Transfer Improvement
End

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Study Design Survey Structure – Motivation [9]
…

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Study Design Survey Structure - Object
“[…] knowledge, machines, equipment, methods, techniques, processes, […]” [1]

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Study Design Survey Structure - Process

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Study Design Survey Structure – Time to transfer

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Study Design Survey Structure - Trigger

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Study Design Survey Structure – Mediums
64 different mediums
Models (1st layer)
2nd layer
3rd layer
People-mover model [2]
Personal exchange
…
Communication model [2]
Publications
Internet resources
Conferences, workshops, etc.
Guidelines
Vendor model [2]
Consultancy
On-the-shelf model [2]
Software, systems, and tool
Standards
Cooperative model
Co-working
Licensing
Research cooperation
Educational model
Educational programs

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Study Design Survey Structure – Goals
…

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Preliminary Results Time to Transfer
3
“[…] knowledge, machines, equipment, methods, techniques, processes, […]” [1]

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Preliminary Results TT Mediums
22%
22%
16%
5%
5%
11%
5%
11%
61%
38%
38%
33%
33%
38%
33%
27%
33%
11%
5%
5%
16%
22%
44%
33%
50%
33%
33%
16%
16%
27%
38%
16%
11%
11%
11%
5%
16%
11%
27%
38%
22%
38.89%
27%
5%
5%
11%
5%
11%
5%
5%
11%
11%
38%
0%
50%
100%
Workshops
and meetings
Personnel
exchange
Co-working
Publications
Research
cooperation
Software,
systems, and…
Consultancy
Internet
resources
Conferences
Guidelines
Educational
programs
Licensing and
standards
Always
Often
Sometimes
Rarely
Never
human
intensive

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Future Work Analyze Results

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Future Work Extending / Spreading the survey
setechtransfer.wordpress.com

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Questions?
Thank
you
“the process sharing knowledge, machines, equipment, methods, techniques, processes, from transferors to transferees” [1]
Transfer ObjectTransferorTransfereeTransactionTransfer Medium
+
Philipp Diebold
M. Sc.
@p_diebold
Process Management
Dep. MPE
Fraunhofer IESE Fraunhofer-Platz 1 | D-67663 Kaiserslautern
Phone: +49 (0) 631-6800-2183 Fax: +49 (0) 631-6800-9-2183 Email: philipp.diebold@iese.fraunhofer.de