Application of Big Data Technology in Knowledge Transfer Process between Business and Academia

New data and information are being constantly produced as a result of technological development. The data and information are used by many companies as a source for creating knowledge in their sphere of business. The important part of the knowledge creating process is both adequate amount of relevant data, and an ability to transform this data to information. Various technologies are helpful, such as Big Data technology. Mostly big companies with sufficiency of money dispose of Big Data by reason of its complexity and significant expenses in terms of maintenance, specialized staff, technology infrastructure etc. Constantly changing demands of customers together with a strong competitive environment is forcing companies to innovate, for instance by designing new products, improving internal processes, or implementing new technologies. By obtaining such innovation is very helpful cooperation with research and development (R&D) institutions from academia. Universities are in a large extent dealing with R&D activities, on which companies don't have capacities, but the results from these R&D activities are for companies interesting and mostly usable in practice. The purpose of this paper is following findings obtained from analysis of the knowledge transfer and Big Data theory finding and describing the possibility of connecting these two areas in practice. The paper is focusing on knowledge transfer creation within cooperation of companies and universities through access for university to company's database during contract research with usage of Big Data. Knowledge of cooperating subjects is filling up, deepening and verifying through united access to collecting, storing, processing and interpreting available data, whereby emerging knowledge transfer between cooperating subjects. (C) 2016 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V.