Description

Recent scholarship underscores the importance of industry-universities collaboration as an important organizational form for knowledge creation within the national system of innovation (NSI), especially in stimulating new technologies. There are two broad assumptions underlying the establishment and management of universities. The first one is that universities are set up to perform certain well defined functions such as teaching, research and knowledge production and could remain outside the broad national, cultural and political influence. Second, and specific to the research function, the notion of research and development (R&D) without much attention to downstream activities that involve commercialization, limits the relevance of university research. This book based on sound empirical and theoretical scholarship advances considerably our understanding of these issues within a development context. We strongly recommend it to all those interested in the development debate.