Abstract
This chapter examines how the concept of innovation is used to transfer funding from teaching and research to industry and transform the concept of the social to the concept of the economic, through an examination of one Swedish Research Council, the Knowledge Foundation. In its most ambitious scheme to date, the funding of so-called KF Research Centres, the aim is to support the integration of research and teaching at regional colleges with regional industries and individual companies. The interests of major actors in business and industry are systematically described as the interests of “society” or “the region”. College teachers and scholars, especially in the social sciences and the humanities, are pressured to produce educational programmes and research that are considered desirable for these actors or see their disciplines disappear. In short, they must choose between economic or professional bankruptcy.
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Notes
- 1.
The wage-earners’ funds (1984–1992) were labour-managed investment funds financed through a portion of the profits from Swedish companies.
- 2.
All figures have been converted from SEK to euro at the exchange rates of current at the time.
- 3.
The Swedish Foundation for Strategic Research (SSF), the Foundation for Strategic Environmental Research (MISTRA), the Foundation for Baltic and East European Studies (Östersjöstiftelsen), the Swedish Foundation for International Cooperation in Research and Higher Education (STINT), the Foundation for the International Institute for Industrial Environmental Economics at Lund University (Stiftelsen för Internationella institutet för industriell miljöekonomi vid Lunds universitet), the Knowledge Foundation (KK-stiftelsen), the Vårdal Foundation (Vårdalstiftelsen), the Foundation for the Culture of the Future (Stiftelsen framtidens kultur) and the Innovation Center Foundation (Stiftelsen Innovationscentrum).
- 4.
The English translations are my own.
- 5.
The magazine had a circulation of 10,000 copies and was published four times a year. The magazine has been discontinued, and the last issue was published in December 2009.
- 6.
The figure is used by the Knowledge Foundation in order to illustrate the desired progress of co-production. It has been published repeatedly on the Knowledge Foundation’s website, in the Knowledge Foundation Magazine and in annual reports.
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Hyvönen, M. (2013). The Foundations of Knowledge According to the Knowledge Foundation. In: Rider, S., Hasselberg, Y., Waluszewski, A. (eds) Transformations in Research, Higher Education and the Academic Market. Higher Education Dynamics, vol 39. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-5249-8_6
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