Colour Octet effects in Quarkonium Physics

The importance of including colour octet contributions in describing decay and production of quarkonium states is briefly discussed for two cases : the radiative decays of the $\Upsilon$ and the production of $J/\psi$ in the inclusive $B$ decays. It is shown how information on the non-perturbative matrix elements can be obtained by comparing the theoretical expressions computed at next-to-leading order in $\alpha_s$ with the experimental data.