Cooperative research centres (CRCs) increasingly foster Triple Helix (industry-university-government) collaboration and represent significant vehicles for cooperation across sectors, the promotion of knowledge and technology transfer and ultimately the acceleration of innovation. A growing social science literature on CRCs focuses on their…

Discusses social science as an aid to decision making, as a source of social technology, and as a tool for understanding innovation and productivity. Identifies factors that limit the utilization of social science in innovation and productivity research. (GC)

Innovation includes not only the production of new technology but also its use. From the user's perspective several stages are indicated including acquiring initial awareness of the new technology, deciding about its merit, adopting, implementing and deploying, and eventually establishing routine use. This process is longitudinal, involving units…

In view of social processes, politics and the logistics of conducting evaluations, several implicit assumptions of the field challenged by findings on innovation implementation are reviewed. These studies have major implications for evaluation practice, evaluator roles, the use of evaluation results, and the federal role in evaluation. (Author/CM)

New models of research and training combined with dissemination techniques can contribute to relevant social change. The Ecological Psychology Program at Michigan State University, a graduate training program which focuses on model building and implementation research, offers ideas on the plausability of social programming. The process would…

Effective university/industry linkages, it is suggested, require clear-headed analysis of institutional goals, carefully designed "boundary-spanning" structures, and a mix of incentives appropriate to each organization. A conceptual overview of university-industry interaction as an "exchange" system and some illustrative…