The Iceberg Effect: On Technology Transfer from Research to Practice

Many attempts to transfer the results of software research into useful industrial products fail. In this short paper, we identify some of the primary reasons why this happens, based on lessons learned from long-term experience with industrial software development. It is argued here that the primary causes of project failures can often be due to (a) inadequate appreciation of certain factors that are traditionally deemed second-order or even irrelevant in research and (b) underestimation of the impact that these factors can have on the technology transfer itself.