Organization and Determinants of Technology Transfer in the Space Industry

In today’s competitive market, organizations, regardless their nature (that is, universities or industrial companies) are increasingly aware of the need to exchange the technologies, experience and knowledge they have developed in order to access new markets and revenue streams, they also recognise the need to acquire new technologies and knowledge from the external environment in order to exploit their ideas and create new products. Technology transfer is defined as the process for the passing and subsequent use of technology, expertise, know-how or facilities for a purpose not originally intended by the developing organisation. In other words, technology transfer (TT) implies that a technology developed for one industry is then used in a different one. Above all, the transfer of space technology is recognised as complex even though it is increasingly adopted: space technologies can, for example, be adopted for healthcare products, improved waste management and water recovery, as well as by manufacturers. Notwithstanding, the technological innovation literature has as yet paid little attention to this issue, in particular to the TT process into non-space areas from the space sector. In order to fill this gap, the aim of this study is to contribute to broadening the knowledge base on the determinants for TT success by analyzing two projects realized by one of the leading space companies in Europe for small systems integration.