Influence of Product Type on Purposes of Using ICT Applications in the Malaysian Research Institutes

The information and communication technology (ICT) development and expenditure in Malaysia has been growing since the start of the ICT evolution to promote the integration, network and sharing of information among sectors. Research institutes play an important role to support the economic and technological growth through emergence of new product goods, services and processes. This paper is based on the questionnaire survey that was conducted on the researchers at the government research institutes (GRI) and private research institutes (PRI) that use ICT applications. The objectives are to identify the purpose of using ICT applications to signify the presence of information sharing in the development of different product types at the diffusion level of market finding and commercialization. From the finding, it is found that the purpose of using ICT applications for the sharing of information in the GRI and PRI is influenced by product type. Portal that diffused to the level of market finding acts as the tool for sharing information for researchers in GRI for product goods, service and process. In contrast, groupware that used for market finding in PRI is found to be significant only for product service. PRI share information by using the intranet for commercialization, while in contrast, GRI that lack of information to commercialize the product have to rely much on information from the external source and this contributes the usage of groupware.