‘Technology transfer’ and the research university: a search for the boundaries of university-industry collaboration

Abstract

This article examines the emerging ‘technology transfer’ role US academics are expected to play in economic development, what specific roles they believe they can play in industrial innovations, and how they might go about collaborating with private industry. Based on a national survey response of approximately 1000 faculty members at research-intensive universities it concludes that US academics in the 1990s believe that they are more favorably disposed than in the 1980s toward closer university-industry collaboration. A majority of the respondents supports the idea that their universities participate actively in local and regional economic development, facilitate commercialization of academic research, and encourage faculty consulting for private firms. A majority of these respondents, however, refuses to support the idea of their universities getting involved in close business partnership with private industry by way of, for example, start-up assistance or equity investment. Of various organizational and motivational underpinnings analyzed from the data, two factors stand out as central to the current debate on university transfer: one is the perception of declining federal R&D support, which threatens the vitality of their research enterprise, and the other is the impact of close university-industry cooperation, which is likely to interfere with academic freedom — the freedom to pursue long-term, disinterested, fundamental research. A search for the boundaries of university-industry collaboration is, therefore, seen as a balancing act between these two competing concerns.