A typology of technology transfer and acquisition methods: inspired by interactions between particles in chemistry

Companies have various strategies in front of them to meet their technological needs. In many cases, endogenous development of technology is not cost-effective and firms use other methods (both formal and informal) to transfer and acquire technology. Our studies show that so far no standard list of these methods has been provided in the literature and the existing lists have been formed based on the personal observations of researchers. Based on this, this research seeks to provide a standard typology of technology transfer and acquisition methods based on a theoretical framework. This study models a variety of methods of technology transfer and acquisition with interactions between particles with the biomimetic method, which is a structured method for inspiration from nature to solve human challenges. For this purpose, in the first step, "interactions between particles" - which are known and have specific types - have been chosen as the best counterpart that can model the technological relationships between companies. In the next step, the evidence needed to explain the main dimensions and elements of the research model (semantic relationships between the concepts and components of two phenomena in chemistry and management) is collected, and then a one-to-one correspondence is established between the elements of the research subject and the selected counterpart to obtain the final mapping. The modeling of this research shows the existence of 13 technological relationships. The ideas of this article can be the beginning of a path for the use of chemistry in human relations management issues.