Excerpt from Transferring Technology to the Small Manufacturing Firm: A Study of Technology Transfer in Three CountriesCase histories were compiled of 100 instances of technological change in 100 manufacturing companies in eight industries in Ireland, Spain and Mexico. The cases are analyzed for the source of initial ideas and for sources of technology employed in resolving major problems.Technology is found to flow principally through informal channels within industries. Very little information was obtained from the formal mechanisms or institutions normally considered central to the technology transfer process.Foreign subsidiaries obtain the greatest proportion of their technology from their parent firms. Surprisingly, they are found to have several channels of technology blocked to them, which are more readily available to domestic firms. Domestic firms, in many ways have easier access to foreign technology than do the subsidiaries of multinational firms.Product and process innovations originate in somewhat different quarters. Process innovations are slightly more likely to be based on foreign technology, product innovations are more likely to be based on domestic technology.The results reported in the present paper are very similar in many ways to results reported previously in Brazil and Australia.About the PublisherForgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.comThis book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully, any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.