From ivory tower to factory floor? How universities are changing to meet the needs of industry

Abstract

While policy recognises the need to facilitate university-industry technology transfer (UITT), international studies indicate that the setup and effectiveness of the associated instruments is highly context-specific. We examine the reorientation of Irish universities in the direction of facilitating UITT, with a substantive focus on the role of Ireland's technology transfer offices. This paper also questions how academic research is changing in line with policy rhetoric. We find that Irish university research and the management of its output are changing in a manner that is not incompatible with UITT, although with significant resource and skills constraints. These findings hold important lessons for national economic and innovation systems of comparable size, with a development trajectory shaped by foreign direct investment. olicy makers in Ireland 1 have placed a marked emphasis on matters of innovation and view universities 2 as a key node in the Irish national innovation system (Forfás, 2004a). Yet with the exception of skill provision, the specific ways with which the capabilities of universities may be harnessed have entered the debate relatively recently (Forfás, 2007b).We examine the changing face of Irish universities, placing particular attention on the recent evolution of technology transfer offices (TTOs). Although the present work is an exploratory analysis of selected university-industry technology transfer (UITT) issues, it attempts to fill an important gap in the literature complementing the generalised observations of Cunningham and Harney (2006) with empirical insights from individual universities.Ireland, a small, open and rapidly growing economy, is a special case in that it possesses a technologically advanced economic system which, however, owes more to foreign direct investment than indigenous development. In that sense the broad innovation policy drive (and UITT) has an ex post 'afterthought' character, intended to sustain (rather than induce) the atypical Irish development model. Therefore, the insights provided here hold interest for the ex nihilo development of knowledgetransfer policies in similar environments, particularly in the new EU member states.We find that both the scale and direction of research in Irish universities are changing in a manner that is not incompatible with UITT, although with significant resource and skills constraints. PWill Geoghegan is at

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