Technology Transfer as a Form of Co-creation for Future Market: Issues, Frames and Concepts

In developing countries the creation of opportunities for improving the livelihood of citizens remains a major preoccupation of governments, non-government organisations, international funding agencies and technologists. In the past, developmental strategists and policy makers have conceptualised development as an instance of capacity building, where technology transfer in particular has been considered primarily as a diffusion process. Technology in this case, is
introduced because it is seen to be a benevolent lever for human development. In this paper we develop an alternative argument to the benevolence thesis predicating its success or failure in a local context on the nature of the co-creation process and the facilitation of a parallel market where the outcomes of the co-creation process can be elucidated. The endeavour is to develop the idea of co-creation as an alternative framework to technology transfer. Although we make explicit the purpose of co-creation, which is to enable the formation of future markets, we spend little effort on explicating what the objective of this exercise is. Our preoccupation at this stage is primarily trying to explain co-creation and not so much the objective of that co-creation, which is to enable the
formation of future markets. We acknowledge the problem associated with such a line of enquiry but feel confident that once we are able to explicate the dynamics of co-creation as an alternative to technology transfer, we will then be in a better place to frame co-creation within its purpose.