The Benefits of Improving Competitiveness

(the secrets behind technology transfer)

Competitiveness is part of the natural make up of humans and we see it frequently exemplified in sports. In commerce it can prove to be just as dramatic (and maybe a lot less fun)...

Even when one company feels that its market dominance is not threatened, and therefore doesn’t feel the need to change or improve, certainly its competitor will be changing, adapting to the changing demands of the market-place. A competitor may not win all of the market-share overnight, but by constantly adapting to the changing market, the competitor will slowly acquire market share.

It is no accident that the fastest growing, smartest products of any sector are constantly being changed to improve their competitiveness.

One of the fastest growing segments of management services in companies is helping firms to improve their competitiveness.

New Management Stress

Fierce price competition, rapid technological change and increasingly expensive new equipment are combining to place new stresses on management, making traditional responses to the changing marketplace much less effective.

Frequently management service companies are able to identify a few critical internal obstacles that have a surprisingly large impact on a company’s competitiveness. They can draw on experience as managers and as consultants to hundreds of companies, to help remove those internal obstacles – improving clients’ competitiveness by increasing their responsiveness and improving their productivity, reducing their costs and building their selling effectiveness.

Such management service companies particularly focus on removing obstacles to developing relationships with new customers. Above all, they focus on helping their clients to become easier to do business with – but requiring a thorough understanding of the company and the business, and a little insight as to how to implement the required changes.

Improving competitiveness is about how a business relates with its customers. There are many expert management service companies to assist with developing those relations.

Adapting Technologies

Improving competitiveness is also about adapting the company’s technologies for the future.

Failure to adapt to new technology not only reduces competitiveness but it also reduces the chances of the company's survival in the long-term. There is a distinct link between competitiveness and survival; technology transfer is one fast solution to gaining competitive technology.

Money may not be available for R&D, so the cheapest access to new technologies is by technology transfer. Larger public corporations, with the necessary financial structure, can provide the results of its research to SMEs at a very low cost.

New technologies for almost every industry are widely available and the biggest problem of finding those technologies is solved by the Innovation Relay Centres. The European Union’s IRC network (Innovation Relay Centre) is a bridge between SMEs and the new technologies available from the larger corporations, and/or other SMEs.

This pan-European network is able to find the technologies most suited to the specific needs of individual SMEs. The EU-IRC networks do not charge fees for these services, and any other fees for the technology will be the result of individual negotiation between the two commercial parties.

Finding access to new technologies via the IRC's network is one step along the road to improving competitiveness.

Benefits of Competitiveness

The benefits of competitiveness are not just about managing the existing company and clients in a better manner – the benefits of competitiveness are about introducing new technology to a company so that products or services are improved with a better quality at a lower price.

Technology transfer is about improved processing technologies, and about machines and equipment that produce end-products faster, better and at a lower unit cost. With such advantages, naturally a company will improve its competitiveness.

The bonus of technology transfer is not only about faster, quicker machines and so on, technology transfer may provide a whole new technology process that provides your company with unique products in your market sector. Technology transfer may also provide higher efficiency, or higher conversion rates, for the utilisation of raw materials in the products.

There’s no bigger competitive advantage than producing a unique product. There is no bigger benefit to a company's competitiveness: the market, then, is yours.