CRADAs represent a new model of government policy based on steering, or leadership, rather than rowing, or bureaucracy, whereby the steering occurs on the basis of industry partnership and input through co-funding requirements. Michael Berman (1993) 1. Introduction n both the US and Japan, technology transfer from a Federal R&D laboratory to a private company is expected to enhance international competitiveness, which has been a driving force for policy emphasis on technology transfer in the past decade. One main US policy initiative for technology transfer is Cooperative Research and Development Agreements (CRADAs) between one of the 700 Federal R&D laboratories and a private company. ‘CRADAs are comprehensive legal agreements for the sharing of research personnel, equipment, and intellectual property rights in joint government-industry research…. CRADAs are based on a model of partnership with industry in which each partner is expected to pay its own expenses’ (Berman, 1993). While CRADAs are also intended to facilitate increased funding for Federal labs, and their closer relationships with private companies, the main stated objective is to encourage technology transfer. CRADAs represent a type of inter-organizational collaboration intended to enhance international compe- titiveness: ‘The economic strength of our country is being severely challenged…. Competing companies must learn to cooperate, manufacturers must learn to cooperate with their suppliers and customers, and the government must learn to cooperate with industry’ (Warren D. Siemens, the official in charge of tech- nology transfer at Sandia National Laboratory, quoted in Gibson and Smilor, 1992). Technology transfer is the application of knowledge into use (Eto et al. , 1995). The technology transfer R&D Management 28, 2, 1998. © Blackwell Publishers Ltd, 1998. Published by Blackwell Publishers Ltd, 108 Cowley Road, Oxford OX4 1JF, UK and 350 Main Street, Malden, MA 02148, USA. 79 Cooperative research and development agreements (CRADAs) as technology transfer mechanisms Everett M. Rogers 1 , Elias G. Carayannis 2 , Kazuo Kurihara 3 and Marcel M. Allbritton 4 1 Department of Communication and Journalism, University of New Mexico, Albuquerque, NM 87131 – 1171, USA 2 School of Business and Public Management, George Washington University 3 Japanese Ministry of International Trade and Industry 4 School of Information Studies, Syracuse Cooperative Research and Development Agreements (CRADAs) between Federal R&D laboratories and private companies in the US are intended, in large part, to transfer technologies developed at Federal R&D laboratories to private companies. We surveyed the Federal laboratory and private CRADA partners involved in CRADAs at Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico in order to identify certain difficulties inherent in CRADAs as mechanisms for technology transfer. Company partners do not share a common organizational culture with their Federal laboratory counterparts, and are critical of the length of time and complexity of government administrative arrangements necessary to form a CRADA. I