An important trend in university-industry relationships is the negotiation by companies, particularly within the pharmaceutical industry, of multi-year partnerships with universities. Such partnerships provide significant unrestricted and sponsored research funding to universities, often in exchange for the right of the company to license intellectual property from university discoveries in fields of interest and the opportunity to develop collaborations with university scientists. The performance of university-industry partnerships has varied, though many completed partnerships from the 1980s and 1990s appear to have performed poorly and were not renewed by the industry partner. In recent years several pharmaceutical companies have negotiated new partnerships with universities that have significant changes in governance arrangements. The newer partnerships include formal contracts that replace up-front funding to universities with milestone based funding arrangements based on the performance of the partnership, and emphasize close day to day technical collaboration between university and industry scientists through the co-location of industry laboratories near university campuses.
This project studies the goals, governance, and performance of several university-industry partnerships sponsored by pharmaceutical firms. The project examines whether the performance of university-industry partnerships can be explained by differences in the formal and informal governance mechanisms used within partnerships. It also studies whether the performance of university-industry partnerships can be improved through innovation in the design of governance arrangements. The project implements a mixed methodology case study approach to examine the goals, governance arrangements and performance of partnerships. The research combines descriptive data obtained through bibliometric and patent research with evidence developed through interviews with university and industry alliance managers and scientists involved in sponsored research collaborations within partnerships.
Broader Impacts. Multi-year university-industry partnerships are an important mechanism by which academic science is being commercialized, involving many of the country?s elite universities and science departments. The project contributes to the field of science and technology policy through creating in-depth case studies of the goals, governance, and performance of several multi-year university-industry partnerships. The governance of university-industry partnerships is malleable to policy: the formal contracts, informal norms, and patterns of technical collaboration created within partnerships can be changed to mirror improved practice. The results of the project are likely to be of particular interest to university and government officials involved in creating policy surrounding university-industry relationships and the commercialization of science.
