Gonzalo León - Böcker

th The 11 Working Conference of IFIP WG 8.6, Open-IT Based Innovation: Moving Towards Cooperative IT Transfer and Knowledge Diffusion, organized in Madrid in October 22–24, 2008, follows the series started in Oslo in 1995 and continues in the footprints of the past year’s conference in Manchester. This year, although the Madrid Conference addresses the usual topics covered in previous WG8.6 conferences, the emphasis is on the issue of open innovation and its relationships with technology transfer and diffusion in the field of information technology. This issue is deeply modifying the way that knowledge is generated, shared, transferred, diffused, and used across the world as a side effect of globalization. It affects the organizational structure, partnerships, roles assumed by stakeholders, and technology transfer and diffusion models and instruments. Industry, academia, and governments are simultaneously concerned. Although the concept applies to all industrial sectors, IT companies were early innovators. The analysis of the contents of this book allows the identification of some trends in technology transfer and diffusion issues as a part of the innovation process. The same problem is addressed in very different ways and extrapolation is not straightforward. Even innovation terminology is not clearly shared by different subcultures in the field.