A university may undertake to carry out on a paid basis research and development,
product design, investigation of some problem, etc, for a client that does not possess
the knowledge to do it themselves. Although knowledge will be transferred into
the product through this mechanism it does not necessarily become embedded into
the client company. Thus, contract research may form a ‘quick fix’ that deals with a
specific problem, but it often does not give the client company the expertise to deal
with similar problems in future themselves.