0.4 Research methodology  (Page 6/7)

Small and medium enterprises (SMEs) account for 97% of businesses and over 50 % of employment worldwide. A thriving SME sector can drive growth and jobs in developing countries. (www.ifc.org, 2009) Small to Medium Enterprises (SME’s) drive the economy reference OECD. Within this study a definition of a small company has been adopted as being an undertaking employing fewer then 100 employees with annual revenues of £10m or less ( [link] ). While it is acknowledged that the European Commission has a specific SME definition, as presented in [link] (Europa 2009) however for the purpose of this study a specific focus on small enterprises was required, hence the alternative definition as above. This provided a dichotomy of small and large companies.

Tools and approaches

[link] shows the primary thrust of each of the research tool used. The primary purpose of the secondary data research was to identify the relevant scientific research and in particular pockets of world class activity. Despite the primary focus on science useful information was generated on the four components People, Culture, Economics, and Governance. The knowledge transfer questionnaire was primarily focused on generating information relevant to the economic component and in particular, how nanotechnology companies felt that their quest to create value could be assisted by collaboration with university. The collaborative questionnaire was designed to study aspects relating to people and culture in the context of Swansea University whilst also mapping the scientific strengths of the activity. Following completion of the collaborative questionnaire and studying its results short comings were identified and it was recognised that an opportunity had been lost in generating information relevant to the economic component. A supplemental questionnaire was designed with a specific purpose of harvesting that economic data. Following completion of the first four studies, semi structured interviews were conducted to create greater granularity of the issues relating to governance.

Nanotechnology knowledge transfer network questionnaire

The details of the questionnaire are available upon request from the author; however, the cover page is shown in [link] .

Texas – united kingdom&Collaborative questionnaire

The details of the questionnaires are available upon request from the author; however the cover pages were as shown in [link] and [link] .

Supplemental questionnaire

During the study it was identified that more in depth information was needed to better understand the collaborations, nature of the researchers involvement in the identified collaboration, the nature of the researchers interest of the collaboration, the type of partnership of the collaboration whether it’s a one to one or multi partner collaboration, the local of the collaboration and finally the resulting outcome of the collaborations that occurred within the control researchers and the Texas United Kingdom Collaborative researcher. An equal proportion of fourteen of the control researchers and fourteen of the Texas United Kingdom Collaborative researchers were selected to complete these questions, of the two groups of fourteen, an equal number of professors (6 each) and researchers/lecturers (8 each) were selected .