UNIVERSITY-INDUSTRY COOPERATION. THE RATIONALE FOR, IMPACT AND PERSPECTIVES
1 Ministry of Education and Youth (MOLDOVA)
2 Deusto University (SPAIN)
About this paper:
Conference name: 1st International Conference on Education and New Learning Technologies
Dates: 6-8 July, 2009
Location: Barcelona ,Spain
Abstract:
The phenomenon of university-industry co-operation has been well-established before 1940. Unfortunately after postwar period this phenomenon has showed a great decreasing and nowadays it is considered a new era for future development.
Science matches with industry, as a result university- industry co-operation most of all is achieved through high level of labor mobility. Students are writing their Master or PhD thesis with co-operation with companies and university staff gains a high level of research and practice as well companies. This strong co-operation nowadays is increasing especially due to communications and information technologies, good examples could serve Japan, USA, China and Western Europe. Probably the most important motivation concerning this collaboration is to reduce R&D costs, to monitor a wider range of emerging scientific research and to speed the commercialization of scientific research.
"The relationship between universities research and commercial technologies varies considerable across industries"-as it was said in Richard R. Nelson’s work “National innovation systems” and also: “No single model or description of the constraints, advantages, and disadvantages of such collaboration is likely to be accurate for all university-industry collaborations.”
However, by present paper authors try to identify two forms of university-industry co-operation. First category includes all university research achievements and second where companies accumulate technological know-how and utilize this in the next stage of development.
Taking into consideration all forms of collaboration, authors detach that this collaboration need an accurate identification of kinds of organizations and mechanism that works best. And it is very important to point that regionally university-industry collaborations are fostered by a vigorous research culture, and academics research has been crucial to the technical evolution of the industry, especially in the development and deployment of the internet. As a result if research contribution is diminished, then suffer industries and people in general because are increasing the costs of consumption.
Many times industries are focused on short term profit instead of universities that tends to development. To find a equilibrium between this two parts, first of all the authors propose a wide analysis concerning the motivation of universities and companies to get a collaboration, the major factors that have a direct and indirect impact upon this co-operation, role of government in improving links between university and industry and major expectations as from universities and industries, as well from whole economy of a state. Also a great role has the kind of interactions between university and industry: is it formal or informal that actually determines the length of collaboration.
Finally, authors take into consideration the resources scarcity, resource allocation that directly affects the results of university-industry co-operation. In this case a major role it has the technology that has a direct impact upon productivity, development and future innovation.
Keywords:
research, university-industry collaboration, innovation, standards, technology.