Tài liệu Working Partnerships in Higher Education, Industry and Innovation ppt

WORKING PARTNERSHIPS

IN HIGHER EDUCATION, INDUSTRY AND INNOVATION

FINANCIAL OR

INTELLECTUAL

IMPERATIVES

GLENDA KRUSS

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Published by HSRC Press

Private Bag X9182, Cape Town, 8000, South Africa

www.hsrcpress.ac.za

© 2005 Human Sciences Research Council

First published 2005

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Contents

List of tables and figures v

Preface vi

Acknowledgements ix

Abbreviations x

1 Mapping industry partnerships across the higher education sector 1

The aim of mapping partnerships 1

Designing a process to map partnerships across the sector 7

Analysing partnerships in the South African higher education

institutional landscape 14

Outline of this book 19

2 Describing partnerships in institutions with high technology capacity 21

Defining ideal types of partnership – drawing on the literature 21

Conceptions of partnership at the 18 institutions 26

Initiating partnerships 34

Coverage and contribution of partnerships 45

Products and outcomes of partnership 57

Summary 68

3 Patterns of partnership in the three high technology fields 73

The tension between financial and intellectual imperatives 73

Traditional forms of partnership 76

Dominant new forms of partnership 77

Entrepreneurial forms of partnership 79

‘Network’ forms of partnership 79

Mapping partnerships in the three fields of focus 81

Understanding forms of partnership 99

4 Facilitating and constraining industry partnerships in diverse

institutional contexts 101

Mapping institutional responses to partnership in high

technology fields 101

Harnessing innovation potential 107

Emergent entrepreneurialism 123

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‘Laissez faire’ aspirational 134

‘Laissez faire’ traditional 148

Higher education institutional responses to partnership 163

5 Emergent alternative partnership practices 167

Why and how do these institutions differ? 168

What are the emergent alternative approaches? 176

6 Innovation, partnerships and higher education 189

A national system of innovation? 190

Understanding partnerships within institutions 199

Facilitating or constraining partnerships in different kinds

of institutions 202

Appendix 1: Dimensions of partnership used in the design of instruments 209

Appendix 2: Institutional profile template 215

Appendix 3: Total number of active researchers in the three high technology

fields in each institution 220

Appendix 4: Total research output by higher education institutions 222

Appendix 5: NRF-rated scientists by higher education institutions 224

Appendix 6: Total higher education institution research income 226

Bibliography 229

Index 247

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List of tables and figures

Tables

Table 1.1 Assessing high technology capacity in this study 17

Table 2.1 Research income by source in the higher education sector,

1996–2000 46

Table 4.1 Defining features of ideal types of institutional response

to partnerships 105

Figures

Figure 2.1 A continuum of attitudes towards partnership with industry 34

Figure 3.1 Analysing forms of partnership in South Africa 75

Figure 4.1 Higher education institutional responses to partnership 102

Figure 4.2 Location of institutions by type of partnership response: high

technology capacity 164

Figure 5.1 Location of institutions by type of partnership response:

emergent alternatives 177

LIST OF TABLES AND FIGURES

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PREFACE

Working partnerships: Higher education,

industry and innovation in South Africa

An ideal vision of the role of research partnerships between higher education

and industry in a rapidly globalising knowledge economy is becoming

prevalent. However, there is a great deal of dissonance between this vision and

the realities of research, innovation and development in the South African

context, characterised by fragmentation, inequalities and unevenness.

Thus, we have a major knowledge gap about partnerships in South Africa. We

have a general agreement that they are a social and economic ‘good’ and that

it is desirable that collaborative partnerships and networks are formed. We

have a great deal of literature on the possible forms they take in other

countries, their benefits and difficulties. However, we have absolutely no sense

of the extent to which this vision is becoming actualised in South Africa.

Significantly, in the South African case, rather than a focus on measuring the

impact or understanding the ways in which specific features of partnerships

work in order to improve practice, there is a prior research concern to open

up the field and map out what exists, as a basis for more detailed investigation.

The study of necessity will be primarily an exploratory one, aiming to open

up the field and lay a basis for more detailed and in-depth investigations.

The Human Sciences Research Council’s research programme on Human

Resource Development has undertaken a project to explore the extent to

which the networked practices that are believed to characterise the knowledge

economy have indeed begun to penetrate South African higher education and

industry. Where networks and partnerships have developed, how have they

taken form and shape in the South African context, with specific national

policy and economic imperatives? To what extent is there evidence of

collaboration in knowledge generation, diffusion and/or application that will

ultimately contribute to innovation? In what ways has government succeeded

in promoting such partnerships? What are the kinds of changes and benefits

partnerships are bringing about in both higher education and industry?

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Three high technology bands have been identified as priorities for developing

a national system of innovation that will improve South Africa’s international

competitiveness and economic development. The relatively new high

technology fields of information and communication technology,

biotechnology and new materials development have been identified as most

likely to generate benefits for South Africa. These were selected as the

empirical focus for the study. Understanding the conceptions and practices of

research partnerships in each of these three fields will inform understanding

of responsiveness to high technology needs and innovation in South Africa.

This large-scale empirical study is primarily exploratory, aiming to open up

the field and lay down benchmark descriptions of the partnership and

network activity emerging in South African higher education and industry. It

does so through a series of audits and mapping exercises, and through a series

of in-depth case studies.

The study was conceptualised in terms of four distinct but closely inter￾related sub-studies or components. Each empirical study will be disseminated

in a separate title in the series, Working Partnerships in Higher Education,

Industry and Innovation.

Component One was largely conceptual. It provided an entry point into the

conceptual and comparative literature on higher education–industry

partnerships, as well as an introduction to the ‘state of the art’ in each of

the three high technology fields in South Africa, to lay a foundation for the

entire study.

Component Two aimed to illuminate government’s role in promoting

research partnerships by exploring the forms of government contribution

through the Technology and Human Resources for Industry Programme

(THRIP) and the Innovation Fund, and the extent and nature of resultant

partnerships. Data was gathered on industry and higher education

beneficiaries, on the nature of co-operation at project level, and selected

measures of the outputs of the co-operation. The monograph, Government

incentivisation of higher education–industry research partnerships in South

Africa, showed how partnerships, networks and innovation are developing

amongst beneficiaries of government-incentivised funding in general, and in

the three high technology fields specifically.

PREFACE

vii

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Component Three, this book, aimed to map the higher education landscape

in order to investigate the scale and form of research linkages and

collaborative practices between higher education institutions and industry in

each of the three fields. Given the uneven capacity of higher education

institutions and their differential historical legacies, and given different modes

of operation of different knowledge fields, it explores whether partnerships

develop and take different forms in different institutional and knowledge

contexts.

Component Four, entitled Creating Knowledge Networks, focuses on the

demand side, at enterprise level in industrial sectors related to the three high

technology fields. In a limited set of cases, we explore the dynamics of

partnerships in-depth, unpack their multi-linear, contingent and tacit

dimensions, and consider the impact on enterprise productivity, technological

innovation and knowledge production in each of the three fields.

Glenda Kruss

Project Leader

WORKING PARTNERSHIPS: FINANCIAL OR INTELLECTUAL IMPERATIVES

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Acknowledgements

There are many individuals and organisations that have contributed directly

and indirectly to the research study. First and foremost are the research

managers, faculty Deans and research project leaders at all 35 higher edu￾cation institutions, who gave generously of their time and insights, in a highly

pressurised context. The report is dedicated to their commitment and passion.

Second are all the expert consultants who contributed to inform our

understanding:

• of the three technology fields – Professor Rob Knutsen, Dr Butana

Mboniswa, Dr Bob Day and Tina James;

• of the international literature on partnerships and innovation – Dr Ansie

Lombard and Professor Johann Mouton;

• of current research activity in the three fields – Professor Johann Mouton

and his team at the Centre for Research in Science and Technology at the

University of Stellenbosch, Melt Van Schoor and Nelius Boshoff;

• of current institutional research profiles – the Human Sciences Research

Council team of Salim Akoojee, Ansie Lombard, Moeketsi Letseka.

Third are the researchers who conducted site visits and compiled richly

detailed reports on partnership at each institution – Matthew Smith, Trish

Gibbon, Ansie Lombard, Moeketsi Letseka, Salim Akoojee, Candice Harrison,

Lesley Powell, Tracy Bailey, Carmel Marock, Neetha Ravjee, Tembile Kulati,

George Subotzky, Paul Lundall, Carel Garisch and Gabriel Cele.

Fourth are the colleagues in the research programme on Human Resources

Development and the HSRC Press at the Human Sciences Research Council,

who provided intellectual, moral and practical support to enhance this book.

Professor Eddie Webster of the Sociology of Work programme at the

University of the Witwatersrand acted as critical reader, contributing to

deepen the thrust of the argument presented.

Finally, the study would not have been possible without the generous support

of the Carnegie Corporation of New York, particularly in the persons of

Courtenay Sprague and Narciso Matos. This publication was made possible

(in part) by a grant from Carnegie Corporation of New York. The statements

made and views expressed are solely the responsibility of the author.

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Abbreviations

ARC Agricultural Research Commission

BRIC Biotechnology Regional Innovation Centre

CENIS Centre for Inter-Disciplinary Studies (now CREST)

CREST Centre for Research in Science and Technology (formerly CENIS)

CSIR Council for Scientific Research

CTP Committee of Technikon Principals

DACST Departments of Arts, Culture, Science and Technology

DoE Department of Education

DST Department of Science and Technology

DTI Department of Trade and Industry

GTZ German Agency for Technical Cooperation

HSRC Human Sciences Research Council

ICT Information and Communication Technology

IDRC International Development Research Centre

MRC Medical Research Council

NACI National Advisory Council on Innovation

NRF National Research Foundation

OECD Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development

R&D Research and development

SANBI South African Bioinformatics Institute

SAPSE South African Post-Secondary Education

SAUVCA South African Universities Vice Chancellor’s Association

SMME Small, medium and micro enterprises

TESP Tertiary Education Support Programme

THRIP Technology and Human Resources for Industry Programme

UNESCO United Nations Education, Scientific and Cultural Organisation

USPTO United States Patent Office

WORKING PARTNERSHIPS: FINANCIAL OR INTELLECTUAL IMPERATIVES

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CHAPTER ONE

Mapping industry partnerships

across the higher education sector

The aim of mapping partnerships

Higher education, innovation and development in global context

The higher education sector in South Africa currently faces myriad challenges,

with potentially conflicting demands pressing from multiple directions. This

is not a uniquely South African phenomenon. As Bullen, Robb and Kenway

argue, ‘the combined forces of globalisation and the global economy have

exerted pressure on higher education and research institutions to serve the

needs of the emergent knowledge economy’ (2004: 3). At its most general and

broadest level, that is what this book is about. It will contribute to our

understanding of the ways in which higher education institutions in the South

African context have responded to this pressure, to serve the needs of the

knowledge economy.

One of the strongest demands of new policy in South Africa, reflecting global

trends, is the demand that higher education institutions, as crucial sites of

knowledge production and technological innovation (Jansen 2004a), become

more responsive to social and economic needs and contribute to

development. The key assumption that lies at the heart of a knowledge

economy is that national productivity and competitiveness depend on the

capacity to generate, process and apply knowledge-based information

(Castells 1996). Hence, the capacity of a national higher education system to

generate, process and apply knowledge, to contribute to innovation, becomes

a critical issue.

The recent United Nations Human development report 2001 (UNDP 2001)

designed a Technology Achievement Index to capture how well a country as a

whole is participating in creating and diffusing technology and building a

high skills base throughout the population, and thus, its capacity to

participate in global technological innovation in a network era. South Africa

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was categorised as a ‘dynamic adaptor’ alongside Brazil, China, Indonesia and

Tunisia, in that there are important high technology industries and one

‘technology innovation hub’ in Gauteng, but the diffusion of old inventions

such as telephones and electricity is still slow and incomplete. South Africa

thus fares in the middle range, being ranked 39 of 72 ranked countries. It does

not have an impressive score on any of the indicators in the Index, whether it

be patents granted to residents, receipts of royalties and licence fees, and

diffusion of internet hosts, or the proportion of high and medium technology

exports, and the diffusion of old innovations or human skills in terms of

mean years of schooling or the gross tertiary science enrolment ratio.

Nevertheless, South Africa has strong aspirations to move up the global value

chain, to develop a national system of innovation. Innovation is defined as:

the application in practice of creative new ideas, which in many

cases involves the introduction of inventions into the marketplace.

In contrast, creativity is the generating and articulating of new

ideas. It follows that people can be creative without being

innovative. They may have ideas, or produce inventions, but may

not try to win broad acceptance for them, put them to use or

exploit them by turning their ideas into products and services that

other people will buy or use. (DACST 1996: 15)

This is seen as critical to the achievement of social, economic and political

goals, in a context of competing national demands for global economic

competitiveness, sustainable development and equity. As the Department of

Trade and Industry (DTI) has proclaimed in its Integrated Manufacturing

Strategy, competitiveness requires government to align a set of ‘fundamentals’

to steer the economy in its chosen direction, of ‘knowledge-intensive, value￾adding and employment-generating production’ (DTI 2002: 28). These

fundamentals include investment in research and development, innovation

and the assimilation of new technologies.

Technology achievement problems – summed up in the notion of an

‘innovation chasm’ between local industry, local research and international

technology sources – have been identified as key challenges to be addressed by

the Department of Science and Technology (DST) (see for example Adam

2003; DST 2002). Since 1994 there has been a concerted national push to

promote science and technology capacity across the country, with an

WORKING PARTNERSHIPS: FINANCIAL OR INTELLECTUAL IMPERATIVES

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impressive array of policy frameworks, new institutional structures and

funding incentivisation that are still too new to have born significant fruit.

Government has prioritised repositioning higher education to contribute to

global technological and economic competitiveness, with policy since 1994

strongly framed in terms of contributing towards the development of a

knowledge economy in South Africa, held in tension with the call to address

poverty and inequality – as one critical means of bridging the ‘innovation

chasm’. It will be argued that this policy framework offers creative

opportunities for higher education institutions and researchers.

Strategic alliances, networks, partnerships, linkages and collaborations

between higher education institutions and industry – as these relationships

are variously termed – have been identified as a primary means of addressing

higher education’s role in economic development. A core assumption of new

science and technology policy is thus the need to promote a ‘problem-solving,

multi-disciplinary, partnership approach to innovation as a mechanism of

growth and development’ (DACST 1996: 9). Again, this strategy is not unique

to South Africa, being promoted globally by the Organisation for Economic

Cooperation and Development (OECD 1996, 2000), with a similar policy

thrust in the countries South Africa looks to for policy inspiration, Australia

(Bullen et al. 2004), the United Kingdom (Her Majesty’s Treasury 2003),

Canada (Advisory Council on Science and Technology 1999) and the United

States (Tornatzky, Waugaman & Gray 2002).

In South Africa, there are attempts on the part of the state to foster such a

partnership approach between higher education, industry and science,

engineering and technology institutions (SETIs) that can promote

innovation, through funding incentivisation schemes such as the Technology

and Human Resources for Industry Programme (THRIP) and the Innovation

Fund. An HSRC (2003) audit of the beneficiaries, functioning and products

and outcomes of THRIP and Innovation Fund projects in three high￾technology fields found that these partnerships have resulted in tangible

benefits, with significant advantages to both industry and higher education.

‘Partnership’ is seen to provide a key means for higher education institutions

to achieve greater responsiveness, to ensure that their research is better

utilised, their technology better transferred and their research more strategic

or applied. There is a widespread perception that partnerships are desirable

and can provide a means of income for institutions, in the face of shifting

MAPPING PARTNERSHIPS

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relationships with the state, and a new funding environment. The challenge is

framed as a dual one, to contribute to economic growth and to improved

quality of life for the citizens of South Africa.

There is a strong prescriptive trend in this policy discourse, and to a large

extent in the literature on the knowledge economy and partnerships. There is

an assumption that the ‘network’ ideal, or the ‘knowledge economy’ ideal, will

and must unfold if the country is not to be left behind, to ‘catch up’ with

global trends. Indeed, Muller (2001) has argued that the way in which South

African intellectuals have responded to the theory of the network society

proposed by Castells has been partial, in terms of their own political concerns

and without coming to terms with his central argument.

Increasingly, there is a recognition of the gap between the ideal promoted

globally in policy, and the reality of South African conditions, as a developing

country or ‘dynamic adaptor’. Castells himself warns that globalisation ‘has

unleashed extraordinary creativity and technological innovation, but the

contradictions of development are sharper than ever’ (2001: 19). South Africa,

it is clear, has a distinct historical legacy and pattern of socio-economic

inequality that will impact on the way it is able to pursue the ideal of a

‘knowledge economy’ or ‘network society’. However, we need greater

specificity and substance in making such an assertion in order to begin to

understand South Africa’s current and future development path.

To take the issue of partnerships specifically, we have very little sense of the

ways in which partnerships, strategic linkages, collaboration or networks in

fact do emerge in practice across the South African higher education system.

Are old forms of partnership continuing, or are new forms of partnership

emerging? Is there evidence of the ideal network form of trans-disciplinary,

collaborative partnership between industry and higher education in South

Africa? We have very little sense of the conceptions of partnership that exist,

of the ways in which partnerships are initiated or the ways in which they

operate, and what their typical outcomes and products are. And thus, we do

not understand the ways in which a ‘knowledge economy’ ideal is indeed

unfolding in the South African context, or whether there are uniquely South

African ways emerging to bridge the innovation chasm in ways that can meet

development goals – that is specifically what this book addresses.

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Investigating higher education–industry partnerships in South Africa

Such was the impetus that led to the present study in 2002. Research which

attempts to understand higher education responsiveness in South Africa, and

particularly the contribution of research to innovation and hence to economic

and social development, is slowly emerging (Cooper 2003; SAUVCA 2004;

Wickham 2002). A particular focus is the study of ‘technology transfer’

(Garduno 2003) or ‘research utilisation’ (Mouton, Bailey & Boshoff 2003), in

the face of the policy analysis of an ‘innovation chasm’ in South Africa.

The present study was motivated by the observation that there is a strong

imperative to develop partnerships between industry and higher education,

but we do not know the extent to which higher education institutions are

responding. And given the differential history and capacity of higher

education institutions, one may expect that not all institutions will respond in

the same way. Castells (2001) has argued that by their very nature, universities

are dynamic systems of contradictory functions – the generation and

transmission of ideology, the selection and formation of dominant elites,

training a skilled labour force, and the production and application of

knowledge. He stresses that these core tasks of universities have different

emphases according to countries, historical periods and specific institutions,

but that they all take place simultaneously within the same structure. This

results in a complex and contradictory reality.

In 2003, in a context of strong contestation around the future shape of the

higher education sector proposed in ‘restructuring’ plans to merge

institutions to more effectively respond to the challenges of the Department

of Education’s National Plan on Higher Education (DoE 2001a), there were 35

institutions,1 21 universities and 14 technikons with widely divergent

histories, strengths and potentialities in South Africa. By 2005, the process of

restructuring will be formally complete, creating a new landscape of

universities, comprehensive universities (DoE 2004), and universities of

technologies out of the technikons (see CTP 2003), which will need to create

new balances of these ‘contradictory functions’. Higher education institutions

have been established in different historical periods for distinct purposes, and

this historical legacy continues to shape their response to the challenges of the

present. There are distinct variations between the regional economies of the

provinces in which higher education institutions are located, which

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