The Value of Knowledge Transfer Collaborations to Design Academics

ABSTRACT

This paper examines how knowledge is transferred when academics collaborate with commercial partners to practise product design. A number of knowledge transfer models are considered, ranging from state-assisted ones to individual consultancies. Since the interrelationship of knowledge, research, practice and commerce has been controversial, the paper first examines the theoretical issues involved. The case studies chosen to illustrate these issues involve a) a collaboration that began as a Knowledge Transfer Partnership and continued as an Innovation Fellowship, and b) a consultancy between academics and a local company. The conclusions drawn by this paper are that the principal benefit of knowledge transfer collaborations is to provide a mechanism for design academics to develop both skills and knowledge without which, they might only claim an impoverished understanding of design. The principal threat is that such personal enlightenment may not be communicable to others. The setting up of knowledge transfer collaborations to innovate new processes and artefacts increases the likelihood that the lessons learnt can and will be publicly communicated.

KEYWORDS:

• knowledge transfer
• design research
• design process

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Anthony Crabbe

Biography

Anthony Crabbe is research coordinator for theoretical studies in the School of Art & Design at Nottingham Trent University. His research interests are both theoretical and practical. He has been involved in collaborative product design projects for the past ten years, including medical devices, rotationally moulded products and telephone voting systems. He has published reports of some of these activities in design, clinical and technical journals, and has filed several granted patent applications. His principal theoretical interest has been in the ways artists, designers and scientists represent time pictorially.