MAKING SENSE OF DIVERSITY - PUBLIC-PRIVATE SECTOR RESEARCH LINKAGE IN3 TECHNOLOGIES

There is considerable diversity in the extent and nature of industry's research links with academic and government laboratories. The study r eported here sought to understand why companies link up with public se ctor research (PSR) on some occasions and not others, in order to prov ide the basis for designing policies to foster public-private research linkage which are effectively targeted. The study focused on three te chnologies, biotechnology, advanced engineering ceramics and parallel computing, and adopted a rather novel research design which investigat es both industry-PSR linkage activity and the knowledge flows or scien tific and technological inputs (STI) associated with that activity. Ou r findings highlight the general importance to innovation of basic res earch in PSR and of 'instrumentalities', also the heavy reliance on in formal interaction and the literature to access PSR knowledge. There w ere cross-technology differences in the extent of formal linkage activ ity; in the relative significance of STI from PSR; and in the particul ar knowledge contribution of PSR in each technology. Our analysis sugg ests a taxonomy of factors, in the industrial sector, PSR, the technol ogy and the firm, which together appear to explain this diversity. It is proposed that both this taxonomy and the 'STI approach' could prove useful policy and management tools.