This book offers a guideline for "Technology Audit" exercises for the
transforming innovation systems of Central and Eastern European
Countries (CEECs). Further- more, the book presents the results of an
exemplary application of this guideline in the field of biotechnology in
Hungary. The authors - a group of innovation re- searchers of the
Fraunhofer Institute for Systems and Innovation Research (lSI), Germany,
and of the Innovation Research Centre (IKU), Hungary - provide a sound
concept for the identification of technological strengths and weaknesses
of the CEECs' industrially oriented research systems as a basis for the
design of advanced innovation policies. After the Organisation for
Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) had proposed a "Technology
Audit" of Hungary in 1993, a pilot audit was carried out under their
auspices. In parallel, the German Federal Ministry of Education, Sci-
ence, Research and Technology (BMFT) put forward the idea of developing
the audit concept further in order to make it applicable also in other
Central and Eastern European Countries. They asked lSI to utilise the
running OECD audits as a learn- ing source and to work out a
comprehensive audit approach.