Making sense of diversity: public-private sector research linkage in three technologies

There is considerable diversity in the extent and nature of industry's research links with academic and government laboratories. The study reported here sought to understand why companies link up with public sector research (PSR) on some occasions and not others, in order to provide the basis for designing policies to foster public-private research linkage which are effectively targeted. The study focused on three technologies, biotechnology, advanced engineering ceramics and parallel computing, and adopted a rather novel research design which investigates both industry-PSR linkage activity and the knowledge flows or scientific and technological inputs (STI) associated with that activity. Our findings highlight the general importance to innovation of basic research in PSR and of ‘instrumentalities’, also the heavy reliance on informal interaction and the literature to access PSR knowledge. There were cross-technology differences in the extent of formal linkage activity; in the relative significance of STI from PSR; and in the particular knowledge contribution of PSR in each technology. Our analysis suggests a taxonomy of factors, in the industrial sector, PSR, the technology 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.