УДК 37’072

O. V. Volchanskyy, assosiate professor, PhD in Physics

Kirovohrad State Volodymyr Vynnychenko Pedagogical University,

Kirovohrad, Ukraine

UNITED STATES CORPORATE RESEARCH:

History of University-Industry Linkages

The paper examines the process of emergence and development of the university corporate research in the United States of America.

Keywords : corporate research, employee training, university-industry corporate linkages.

Among the factors contributing to the success of the U.S. economy over the past decade – as reflected in the doubling of productivity growth compared to the preceding two decades – is the continued transformation of the U.S. economy toward a more entrepreneurial form of capitalism. University research developed in corporate linkages with industries through the Federal, State and philanthropic support sets quite an important place in this process and as numerous studies show is gathering momentum.

University-Industry Corporate Research is the interdependent research relationships between universities and companies, under which universities, sponsored by businesses, develop a technology or any other innovation which becomes the company property. The goal of the article is to survey the origin of the university-industry linkages in the USA and the transformation of the former into corporate research interaction.

In the United States, university-industry research relationships began with the industrial revolution [9]. Traditionally, it was the industry that sought partnerships with universities as a means to identify and train future employees. But very often big business and industry created training and development departments or corporate universities of their own to provide employees, both rookie and veteran, with the skills necessary to perform their duties with precision and efficiency [8].

Table 1

Growth of Corporate Universities [6]

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Alongside, the relationships of industries and existing classical universities developed. Before the mid-20-th century those relations were random, narrow and not systemic. But closer to the present, as industrialization increased, more universities became directly involved in the development of technology for commercial purposes.

Universities and corporations first entered into agreements allowing corporations to exploit intellectual property rights arising from university research in the 1920s, when scientists from the University of Wisconsin founded the Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation (WARF). This foundation sought to protect university inventions through patent protection and to introduce discoveries to the public through the use of licensing arrangements with industry. Though WARF achieved early successes, the practice of patenting and licensing inventions to industry did not reach widespread use until the 1940s, when several other major universities began following the technology licensing methods developed by WARF [5].

Universities were a valuable source of scientific knowledge and expertise for the nascent chemical and pharmaceutical industries from the late 19th century onward [7]. Those, in turn, stimulated research in universities. Biomedical and biological research began to flourish at the University of Pennsylvania, the University of Delaware, and Rutgers, thus inducing the simultaneous growth and collocation of corporate research labs of companies such as Sterling, Merck, DuPont, and Eli Lilly.

World War II was a boon for technology development. The programs launched during the war and the scale of the funding provided by the government, made large-scale scientific research an integrated part of the activities of several leading American universities. Under this approach, Harvard entered into a long-term, large-investment contract to develop a particular technology. This type of university-corporate agreement provided an additional model for commercializing university inventions by concentrating on a particular objective for a collaborative arrangement [5]. Later, when the Cold War escalated, research for the purpose of technology development became more firmly entrenched.

Massive Federal support for research became institutionalized in the United States, along with equally massive spending on research and development (R&D) by the corporate sector. A portion of this money was funneled to the universities and helped formalize and cement university-industry links that had begun multiplying in the 1940s.

The end of the 20-th century and the beginning of the 21-st century have been enduring a thunderstorm of changes so fundamental that some say the very idea of the university is being challenged. Universities are experimenting with new ways of funding, forging partnerships with private companies and engaging in mergers and acquisitions.

Development of University-Industry Corporate Relations becomes an objective, and therefore, inevitable process for a number of reasons:

1. Democratization of higher education—“massification”: the proportion of adults with higher educational qualifications almost doubled between 1975 and 2000, from 22% to 41%.

2. The rise of the knowledge economy. The best companies are now devoting at least a third of their investment to knowledge-intensive intangibles such as R&D, licensing and marketing.

3. Globalisation. US universities are opening campuses all around the world; and higher education is turning into an export industry.

Competition. The traditional universities are being forced to compete for students and research grants, and private companies are trying to break into a sector which they regard as “the new health” [10].

4. The demand for innovation. Ceaseless innovation that permits companies to continuously refresh their product lines is becoming a necessity for many [8].

5. The mounting cost and complexity of technologies [2] encourage firms to adopt “open” innovation systems that favor partnerships, alliances, consortia, and coordination of research effort with universities [1].

6. Necessity for company researchers to deepen scientific knowledge for further technological advance; to rely more on university-based researchers in emerging fields where interdisciplinary expertise is required, such as nanotechnology and biotechnology.

7. The conduct of cutting-edge research now requires teamwork—sometimes straddling several disciplines—and expensive equipment for conducting experiments and measuring results [4].

For those reasons now every industrial country is moving to make university-industry links a centerpiece of its innovation systems, and the notion of a triple helix –representing the symbiotic relations yoking together the government, the universities, and the business community – has acquired wide currency [3]. The path to the triple helix begins from two opposing standpoints: a statist model of government controlling academia and industry (Figure 1) and a laissez-faire model with industry, academia, and government separate and apart from each other, interacting only modestly across strong boundaries (Figure 2). New organizational innovations especially arise from interactions among the three helices (Figure 3). The common triple helix format supersedes variation in national innovation systems.

Table 2

Triple helix models of university corporate relations

Fig. 1 Statistic model Fig. 2 Laissez-faire model Fig.3 Interactive model

Presently, Triple Helix intersection of relatively independent institutional spheres generates hybrid organizations such as technology transfer offices in universities, firms, and government research labs and business and financial support institutions such as angel networks and venture capital for new technology-based firms that are increasingly developing around the world [3].

Thus, industry-university linkages originated as cooperation between businesses and educational establishments, when the latter were training companies’ future employees, and further transformed into current form of interdependent research, when a new technology, profitable for a financing company, is elaborated by university researchers.

REFERENCES

1. Chesbrough, Henry William. Open Innovation: The New Imperative for Creating and Profiting from Technology.– Boston : Harvard Business Review Press, 2003. – 226 p.

2. David, Paul A., Dominique Foray, W. Edward Steinmueller. The Research Network and the Economics of Science: From Metaphors to Organizational Behaviours // In The Organization of Economic Innovation in Europe / Ed. Gambardella A., Malerba F. – Cambridge : Cambridge University Press, 1999. – P. 303–342.

3. Etzkowitz, Henry. The Triple Helix: University–Industry–Government. Innovation in Action. – NY, London : Taylor & Francis Group, 2008. – 164 p.

4. Galison, Peter L. , Hevly B. Big Science: The Growth of Large-Scale Research. – Stanford : Stanford University Press, 1994. – 408 p.

5. Hill D. Corporate Sponsored Research and Development at Universities in the United States / David W. Hill // AIPPI Journal. – 2002. – June // http://www.finnegan. com/resources/articles/articlesdetail.aspx?news=4447f1c1-c2fe-422a-9863-cd36a97158f9.

6. History of Corporate Universities [article] // http://www.cuenterprise.com/ 777about/ cuhistory.php.

7. Mowery D., Rosenberg N. 1998. Paths of Innovation: Technological Change in 20th-century. – Cambridge : Cambridge University Press. – 214 p.

8. Shahid, Yusuf. University-Industry Links: Policy Dimensions. How Universities Promote Economic Growth / Edit. Yusuf Sh., Nabeshlma K. – Washington : The World Bank, 2007.– P.1–21.

9. University-Industry Linkages and UK Science and Innovation Policy / Hughes, Alan [paper] // http://docs.google.com/viewer?a=v&q=cache:ayfm 9Lv4Kv0J:citeseerx. ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download.

10. Wooldridge, Adrian. The brains business. The Economist [article] // http://www.economist.com /node/4339960.