Technology Transfer and Innovation: Application of Appropriate Technology to Solve Community Problems
Keywords:
technology transfer, appropriate technology, community innovation, institutional sustainability, absorptive capacity.Abstract
This study examines how technology transfer and innovation generate sustainable problem-solving outcomes in community contexts through a field-based, mixed-methods, multiple-case design. Drawing on socio-technical systems theory and diffusion scholarship, the research analyses three heterogeneous community domains to identify mechanisms linking technological design, local capability formation, and institutional mediation. The results demonstrate that technological effectiveness is contingent upon adaptive co-production processes that align artefact modularity with user practices and contextual constraints. Innovation efficiency is shown to depend on differentiated absorptive capacities shaped by facilitation structures, learning trajectories, and organisational positioning within local networks. Long-term sustainability is governed less by technical robustness than by governance stability, epistemic anchoring, and intermediary coordination that reproduce capabilities beyond project cycles. By integrating qualitative process tracing with comparative quantitative indicators, the study advances a meso-level explanation of how adaptation, learning, and institutional resilience jointly condition durable technology transfer outcomes. The findings contribute to innovation theory by reconceptualising community-based technology transfer as an institutionalised learning system rather than a unidirectional transmission process.
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