Book review of "The Fountain of Knowledge: The Role of Universities in Economic Development"

Abstract

Breznitz, Shiri M. (2014). The Fountain of Knowledge: The Role of Universities in Economic Development. Stanford: Stanford Press. Pages: 197. Price: $60.00 USD (cloth).The fountains of as a phrase was first used by John Locke in Essay Concerning Human Understanding, published in 1690, to describe how knowledge is founded, i.e., that all the ideas we have spring from either our observations about sensible objects or our internal reflections. Professor Breznitz's book examines the more restricted topic of the commercialization of biotechnology research at Yale and Cambridge Universities. An accurate title would be University technology transfer: Two case studies in the USA and the The primary audience for this book is that of technology transfer officers and university administrators in the biosciences. Breznitz, an economic geographer, collected data from interviews, documents and reports, on the regional economy, the and companies, with a total of 69 in depth interviews in Cambridgeshire and 46 in New Haven, Connecticut, between 2003 and 2008 with updates in 2013.The book begins with an examination of the traditional roles of universities as research and teaching with an acknowledged pressure on modern universities to pay back the as a third role. The higher education literature [see Donald (1997), Improving the environment for learning] cites a continuum of five roles of the university in interaction with the community, from universal to local: as an intellectual or nerve center of a learning society, as a center for research and technological advance, as a critic of society, as a guide to society for the betterment of human kind, and in the education of students to meet the job requirements of society. In her Tale of two renowned universities, Cambridge ranking third and Yale ranking tenth in the Times Higher Education World rankings for 2013, Breznitz notes the mission of Cambridge to contribute to society at the highest international levels of excellence. She also notes its noncontrolling policy toward commercial exploitation of academic know-how and links with industry generally. Yale is introduced as having a historical culture of non-involvement with the community in general and with industry in particular in the early 1990s.The research literature on technology transfer in Chapter 2 is divided into external and internal factors. Most notable among the external factors is government legislation that ranges from the intended missions and funding of universities to intellectual property policies and tax incentives provided by governments. Environmental factors describe relationships between institutions on national and regional levels. Internal factors include culture, policy and organization. Within the university culture, Clark's (1998) concept of instrumental interactivism, the interaction of all elements and policies in the university, is introduced as key to the transformation of a university. A significant policy issue is the share of royalties allocated to inventors. A higher percentage of royalties to faculty members tends to increase the number of inventions licensed to existing companies, but to decrease the number of university spin-outs. The higher the inventor's royalty share, the lower the incentive to spin out a company. In the two case studies, Cambridge provides a higher share to inventors, while Yale provides a lower share, which promotes the creation of spin-out companies. The third set of internal factors are concerned with the organization of technology transfer offices: personnel, business experience and past success. Breznitz states that the technology transfer office is the university resource with the strongest impact on the creation of spin-out companies.Most salient in the historical and national frameworks of the two countries described in Chapter 3 is the early emphasis on conducting applied research in the land grant universities as stipulated in the US federal government's Morrill Acts of 1862 and 1890, and the contrasting late entry of government funding for research after the second world war in the UK. …