Technology has become an essential tool for achieving competitiveness for the industry in today's business environment. Lack of technology and continuous updating of technology leads to inefficiency, lower quality, poor customer attraction and therefore lower return on capital. Thus Technology has become a competitive tool. Small & Medium scale Enterprises (SMEs) can hardly afford their own individual R&D. Therefore, it is necessary to nurture and support SMEs by way of technological upgradation. It is technology that has been a prime mover in the spectacular industrialization of the developed countries like USA, Germany, Japan etc. Even today, it is technology that continues to spur industrial growth with increasing rapidity. Such fountains of technologies have sprung not only from R&D and innovation, encouraged-even necessitated-by the interplay of the driving forces in the free market economies of these advanced countries, but also in equal measure as a result of State level strategic mechanisms instituted into the industrial sectors.

There are several ways of achieving technology development or technology transfer. One usual method is to develop in-house capability. Such method may be tenable for large-scale industry with its own R&D facility. But Small & Medium scale Enterprises (SMEs) can hardly afford their own individual R&D. In India, the SMEs contribute to a very substantial share of the GDP. This is true even in other countries like Taiwan, Germany, UK etc. Therefore, it is necessary to nurture and support SMEs by way of technological upgradation. In the present day scenario, where technological specialization has become complex and our industrial sector is not technologically strong, it is cost effective as well as time-saving for SMEs to make use of Networked Institutional Assistance rather than undertake in-house development of technologies. Such networking has become necessary in the present day because modern products and services have several multi-disciplinary technological inputs.

India, despite its vast technical manpower and its equally impressive S&T infrastructure has by and large not been able to keep up pace in the international technology race. Not much of the technological developments of recent times even if not very latest, are easily available to the Indian industry due to several reasons. The resultant stagnation in our country has also led to the lack of appropriate working mechanisms and institutionalized strategies and supportive forces for technological growth, technology transfer and continuous renewal. It is only in recent times, one sees some mechanisms and strategies emerging in our country to rectify this situation vis--vis technology, esp. because of competitive forces in the wake of liberalization and also due to questions relating to the utility aspects of S&T activities. Much more needs to be done in this area of technology transfer or technology development by way of strategic or institutionalized mechanisms, if we have to realize across-the-board industrial upgradation in terms of technology. The role of State Governments, since liberalization, has grown many-fold in matters of industrialization, trade, commerce and infrastructure. Naturally the States also have to pay increasing attention to the use of technology by industries in their States - for their survival, growth and competitiveness. Strengthening industrialization through technological upgradation can also bring about greater employment and better earning capacity for its people.

STEINBEIS FOUNDATION FOR ECONOMIC PROMOTION, an institution located in the state of Baden Wurttenberg, Germany is a private provider of services in the field of technology and know-how transfer, operating in affiliation with the local Government, has proved to be a highly successful model. The Foundation earns its money through the technology services it provides. It is mainly engaged in the business of translation of knowledge into profitable commercial ventures. It utilizes the State R&D infrastructure including the services of Professors of the local Polytechnics and Universities and also freelance professional consultants to do problem solving for the industry. In such process, the overheads are cut down and valuable time is also saved. The German industry (in the state of Baden Wurttenberg) esp. the SMEs have derived enormous benefit in terms of technology upgradation as a result of the Steinbeis Foundation. That the Foundation itself earned 149 million Deutsche Marks in 1998 alone is an indicator of the technology-driven industrial growth in that state.