Knowledge transfer and transformation: moving knowledge from research to policy

Abstract

This paper focuses on Knowledge Transfer (KT) as a policy initiative. Knowledge transfer/translation has developed from policy concerns about the gap between research-based knowledge trapped in disciplinary silos and the growing information and knowledge needs of various users. In addition KT maps closely against knowledge economy assumptions as effective KT is believed to provide competitive system advantage. In this context, what is distinctive in contemporary global economic development is ‘the action of knowledge on itself as the main source of productivity’. But the production of such knowledge does not take place in a vacuum. The challenge, then, for governments driving towards knowledgebased economies is not just to promote active knowing as an economic resource but to seek to manage and contain the knowledge that generates as a collective community resource, within acceptable limits. It is the difficulties that this simultaneous need for freedom and control presents that form the core of this paper.