Abstract:

The College Centers for the Transfer of Technologies (CCTT) are non-profit research centres under the responsibility of certain colleges in Québec (Canada) and financed by Québec’s Department of Education and Department of Economic Development, Innovation and Exportation. Their missions is to support Québec’s organizations and companies (especially small and medium enterprises) in the innovation process through technical assistance, applied research, information and training, and to generate impacts on college training (ICT). At the moment, 46 CCTTs are at work in Québec, gathering more than 600 experts, college professors and students in different fields, from aerospace to integration of immigrants.

Despite their importance in the Québec intermediation and innovation systems, CCTTs have until now been the subject of very few researches. When they have, it has mainly been in terms of their contribution to the economic or industrial development of a region or all of Québec. In the research we conducted, we instead analyzed the tandems formed by colleges and their affiliated CCTT, which is, in itself, a new scientific perspective. In doing so, we aimed to offer decision makers and researchers working at CCTTs and higher education levels strategies to optimize the ICTs. Once the approaches enabling an optimization of the impacts of CCTT activities on college training are known, another question remains: how do we showcase these repercussions? That is the second major issue that our research aimed to address, in order to help the college-associated CCTTs to better highlight the positive effects of the CCTT activities on college training.

Our results are based on information retrieval and on 28 individual interviews conducted in 7 colleges and in the CCTTs to which they are affiliated. Each part of our study has led to consultations with members of colleges and CCTTs so that the results of our research reflect as best as possible the issues, needs and challenges of this environment.

Our qualitative research provides three types of results:

1. Strategies to optimize the impact of CCTT activities on college training
- We suggest a significant number of optimization strategies based on five aspects linked to the production of ICTs: the environmental demands, the actors involved in the benefits, the vehicles of these benefits and the benefits per se as well as their direct recipients. Some of them are addressed to all actors involved, while others are more specifically aimed at one or more of them: to colleges and CCTTs, whether taken jointly or individually, at the "Réseau Trans-tech" (which is the network of all CCTTs), at concerned departments and granting agencies.

2. Tool banks capable of inspiring the various environments
- These tool banks are likely to lead toward the production of ICTs, based on the practices which prevail within the CCTTs and colleges, but also, based on the practices of related institutions located outside Québec.

3. A set of indicators
-We propose a significant number of indicators to value the impact stemmed from the activities of a CCTT on college training.

Since organizations similar to CCTTs exist in various parts of the world and since every country faces the same innovation challenges, we believe that our results are transferable in many contexts and that INTED participants could find in them ways to optimize their own practices.

Keywords:

Research, technology transfer, education, CCTT.