Sharing Innovation's Benefits

WTR articles to date have addressed raising innovation capacity in lagging regions. We now move to the question of sharing the benefits of specific innovations, noting that one way to do this is to focus on a particular technology as a demonstration project within a capacity-building project. The word "sharing" implies mechanisms that go beyond simple buy-sell transactions. This paper catalogs a number of these mechanisms, which in fact include many well-known technology transfer techniques. The paper focuses in particular on two mechanisms, technology assessment and new institutions, the latter including three Korean institutions. A manager seeking to benefit from the several mechanisms currently must find them in as many different places. We therefore present the possible "roll-up" of sharing mechanisms as an opportunity in social entrepreneurship. We hope the paper will lead to an expanded list of sharing mechanisms, consideration of their feasibility in different regions, and ultimately a one-stop shop for managers seeking to benefit their own and other organizations by the sharing of innovations.