R&D service firms are highly innovative knowledge-intensive businesses. They constitute an important component of the knowledge economy, but one that is often in the shadow of the role normally attributed to universities and other public research organisations in the growth of high tech clusters...

New technological ideas must be employed more efficiently to increase an EEC country's ability to compete. There are many barriers to exploitation of new ideas, but certain measures can help: academic researchers should be able to undertake consultancy work; increase R&D contracts to small...