The interaction between university and business has been a subject of economic, political and social interest for several decades, and forms part of the debate that revolves around the relevance of universities in today’s world and the revolution occurring in higher education.
Universities are considered an important ingredient of the innovation formula in the new knowledge society, and as such they are experiencing important changes. From being the producers and guardians of knowledge for its own sake1, they are increasingly being asked to generate “useful” knowledge and to “transfer” it to the economic system. The concept of knowledge diffusion, therefore, has become as relevant to the university’s mission as knowledge creation.
As return on investment becomes the focal point of the global consumer capitalistic society, where accountability often turns to simple accounting and money becomes the measure of all things, universities are put under the ringer to account for the funds they receive (particularly public ones) and forced into designing profit-making strategies and increasing their interaction with the businesses that are at the end of the rope, exerting the major squeeze.
A serious debate has been taking place on whether implementing profit-making business related strategies will represent a positive or negative change for universities or even if they truly belong within the scope of university function. One extreme of this debate is represented by those who view the link with businesses as threatening the “real” role of university as unbiased generators of knowledge for the pursuit of profitable endeavours, while at the other extreme are those who consider the university another economic agent and, as such, believe that the financing of academic activities should be justified in terms of economic productivity.
This paper will discuss these different views and their effect on university organizational structure and function. It concludes that since the links with businesses arise as ad hoc solutions to intermittent situations, a culture that supports them has not yet been rooted within the university system and that instead, the prevailing culture and structure opposes the development of appropriate mechanisms to promote them. First, a reference framework for the analysis of university-business links is developed, followed by a description of the activities involved in these links and their accompanying organizational structures. Subsequently, a description of the USB is provided. The next section centres on the analysis of university’s decision and policymaking capabilities in the development of diffusion and transfer activities, focusing on the stakeholders’ perspective and sphere of influence. The remaining part of the paper proposes strategies and policy recommendations that can promote university-business relations, particularly those involved with the licensing of inventions and the generation of technology-based enterprises arising from research results.
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