Th is paper focuses on Knowledge Transfer (KT) as a policy initiative. Knowledge
transfer/translation has developed from policy concerns about the gap between
research-based knowledge trapped in disciplinary silos and the growing
information and knowledge needs of various users. In addition KT maps closely
against knowledge economy assumptions as eff ective KT is believed to provide
competitive system advantage. In this context, what is distinctive in contemporary
global economic development is ‘the action of knowledge on itself as the main
source of productivity’. But the production of such knowledge does not take place
in a vacuum. Th e challenge, then, for governments driving towards knowledgebased
economies is not just to promote active knowing as an economic resource
but to seek to manage and contain the knowledge that generates as a collective
community resource, within acceptable limits. It is the diffi culties that this
simultaneous need for freedom and control presents that form the core of this
paper.
