Governments all over the place implement policies based on the assumption that universities are good for the local economy. Does this theory hold water? The Industrial Performance Center at MIT takes some of the guesswork out of this notion in a new paper Universities, Innovation, and the Competitiveness of Local Economies.
The paper makes some interesting points. We especially like the comment that:
"At present the major focus is on technology transfer. Many universities are seeking to exploit their laboratory discoveries by patenting and licensing intellectual property to local firms. But often this is not the most important contribution."
The paper points out that universities can also bring in "new human, knowledge, and financial resources from elsewhere". But most of all they make the statement: "Very often the university’s most important contribution is education." It may seem to be a blindingly obvious, but you would not know this from some of the things that go on and the grandiose schemes of some universities.
Another good point from the summary is that "A key finding is that the university role in local innovation processes depends on what kind of industrial transformation is occurring in the local economy."
Our take on this is that it is a bad idea to adopt a one size fits all strategy for local university-industry relationships. Even tech transfer comes in different forms. Small companies like to deal with local organisations. They may have seemingly trivial technical problems, like how to get a vacuum system to work properly. But these are the bread and butter of many academic labs. No need to do frontiers research to help local businesses, then. Just offer some simple support and training in tools and techniques.
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