Center on Knowledge Translation for Technology Transfer
Research Project 1. Synthesizing Academic and Industry literature on Technology-based Innovations
This research project brings you the Need to Knowledge (NtK) model for the generation of commercial devices and services, which is housed in the KT4TT knowledge base. Resulting from the integration of new product development guidelines, the formal research process, and Ian Graham’s Knowledge to Action model, the NtK offers a step-by-step description of the activities likely to lead discoveries and inventions of technology-based devices and services to commercial success. The NtK is intended to be used as a guide to knowledge translation for technology transfer, and is also the framework that the project team is using for the classification of excerpts from an extensive literature review.
The goal of the literature review is to substantiate the NtK model with actionable information from academic and practice literature for use by researchers and new product developers. To achieve this goal, the project team scanned over 12,692 literature titles and abstracts, conducted a more detailed review of 298 citations, and performed complete reviews of 212 pieces of literature. For each piece of literature, reviewers developed annotations, selected the knowledge user groups who could benefit from the literature; identified settings where the literature’s information would be applicable; and reported the type of evidence described by the literature (practice or experience based, experimental, quasi-experimental, or non-experimental research). The reviewers then extracted important information (quotes or paraphrasing as needed) and associated each extraction with relevant stages, gates, steps or tips within the NtK model. This work has resulted in the extraction of 1208 excerpts- including primary excerpts (author’s own conclusions) and secondary excerpts (author reporting others’ findings).
Check out the project page for Development Project 2. to learn more about the other components of the knowledge base!
As part of the secondary analysis of knowledge base excerpts, all data was reviewed to identify tools that could be helpful to users of the model. At present, over 40 tools have been identified in the NtK’s steps and posted to the knowledge base website under step-level links to “Supporting Evidence”. Additionally, case examples of the NtK model in practice were crafted by the project team and are posted in the stage column on the NtK webpage.
