Contribution Research Paper

The sources of these contributions include engineering, the natural sciences, com- puter sciences, mathematics, social sciences, behavioral sciences, management studies, and policy sciences. University-based research provides an education/training ground for entrants into the industrial workforce.

The wide variety of university-industry research interactions in these five industries makes it difficult to make generalizations.

With the notable exception of multicompany research centers at universities, most financial support by industry is negotiated company by company.

A large number of research structures and mechanisms, both internal and external to the university (e.g., academic departments, research centers, industry laboratories, start-up companies), provide multiple pathways for the commercialization of new ideas.

A strong market and consumer demand for new technologies provides strong commercial incentives for introducing new technologies and, there- fore, strong incentives for funding research to create them.

Industry provides more than financial support for academic research, and academic research contributes more than technological advances to industry, although some contributions are difficult to measure in dollars.

A comparison of patterns of interaction reveals a number of ways industry, academia, and govern- ment could realize even greater benefits through university-industry interaction.University graduates and faculty are also involved in many technology-based, start-up companies. universities are the primary source of people with research training and experience, including undergraduates, graduate stu- dents, postdoctoral researchers, and faculty.Students trained in research are a major component of academia's contribu- tion to industrial performance. Individuals with research training are highly valued by industry, whether or not they are involved in research for the companies that hire them.Below is the uncorrected machine-read text of this chapter, intended to provide our own search engines and external engines with highly rich, chapter-representative searchable text of each book.Because it is UNCORRECTED material, please consider the following text as a useful but insufficient proxy for the authoritative book pages.In the aerospace industry, the mature, highly concentrated airframe, propulsion, and launch-vehicle sectors have a fairly narrow range of interactions with academic research, often using consulting agree- ments and contract research to develop better process methodologies and tools.By contrast, the less mature unmanned aerial vehicles sector of the industry looks to academic research for technical support, as well as for new concepts and understanding.Academic researchers also participate in new companies.Many technology- based start-up companies emerge from academic research and continue to attract research graduates as they grow.PATTERNS OF UNIVERSITY-INDUSTRY INTERACTION Finding 7-1. The nature of university-industry interactions varies from industry to industry as well as among companies within a given industry and individual academic institutions.Each of the industries studied has a distinctive environment and poses differ- ent challenges for university researchers.