This article asks whether the UK's defence technology base is a potential solution to industrial underachievement or whether it is perhaps at the heart of the problem. In the UK, firms seem often to have opted for defence as the best route to business success. This is often portrayed as the...

Set up at the start of 1999, the UK Defence Diversification Agency (DDA) has technology transfer from defence to civil sectors as one of its main aims. This paper outlines the initial aims of the DDA and sets this in context by detailing previous attempts to foster such ‘spin-off’ in the UK....