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Business-University Collaboration in a Developing Country in the Industry 4.0 Era—The Case of Hungary

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Abstract

Emerging economies, as well as Hungary in Europe, are frequently host countries to multinational companies. For both parties it is a great challenge to build relevant knowledge- generating capacities which are attractive in respect of collaboration. In such collaborations those countries on the receiving end of foreign direct investment have the ambition to become more than mere pools of knowledge assets for multinational companies. An insight into Hungarian attempts to achieve this aim under difficult circumstances might be useful for other countries in similar situations. In recent years the majority of Hungarian business research and development expenditure has come from companies wholly-, or majority-owned by foreign interests. This high proportion indicates the significant role of foreign companies in the Hungarian research agenda and in business-university collaboration. This chapter focuses on how foreign companies are shaping business-university collaboration in research and experimental development and touches upon the role of government as facilitator. The subjects of research and development contracts and collaboration depend on the environment and on both potential partners—that is to say, by the types of demand generated by companies, and by how relevant are the competences and capabilities of universities in meeting these demands. Are they moving towards the cutting edge agendas inherent in Industry 4.0 and globalisation? Method of research: analysis of available data; information from websites and interviews with key actors who are partners in collaboration. The chapter also summarizes a few lessons which may be relevant for other economies too.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    From the actors in innovation system we focus on two kinds of organisation: universities and businesses. In Hungary the term ‘university’ covers so-called science universities, applied science universities and colleges, each of which may be public or private, although the latter may follow a different financial regime. In Hungary business organisations belong to different size categories, similar to other countries, and they may be owned by foreigners, private and public domestic owners and a mixture of these.

  2. 2.

    In Europe a crucial principle is non-discrimination between domestic and foreign-owned firms.

  3. 3.

    These two paragraphs were published in Inzelt (2010).

  4. 4.

    The Bayh-Dole Act originates from the US (1980, amended in 1986). It rationalized and simplified federal policy toward the patenting and licensing by non-profit institutions of the results of publicly funded research. Since 1980 many countries have followed this form of regulation.

  5. 5.

    This is not unrelated to how universities’ autonomy fluctuates: non-autonomy through semi-autonomy to full autonomy over time.

  6. 6.

    http://www.nav.gov.hu/magyar_oldalak/nav/ado/tarsasagi/kf_20120319.html (03/19 2012).

  7. 7.

    Source: HCSO, www.ksh.hu/htm/1/indi1_3_1.html.

  8. 8.

    The proportion of BERD’s foreign funding was more than one fifth at fully or majority foreign-owned companies, whilst that proportion was only 5% in all other companies in 2017. (HCSO 2017).

  9. 9.

    The Amendment (2014) to Higher education law 2011 aimed to facilitate the professionalization of institution management sharing the previous tasks of rectors between rectors and chancellors.

  10. 10.

    At several universities chancellors are political appointees rather than professionals---which may lead to the somewhat fragmented functioning of TTOs.

  11. 11.

    The early staff members of TTOs were naturally inexperienced. There were many changes in their ranks due to poor conditions for TTOs, and the reluctance of faculty members to collaborate caused chaos at several TTOs. Financial conditions for TTOs were linked to projects and this damaged their stability, further eroding the staff.

  12. 12.

    A recent EU-financed study focused on BUC in 33 European countries. From Hungary 620 academics, 120 representatives of HEI and 42 business representatives (among whom 21% were MNCs) responded to the on-line surveys. (Orazbayeva et al. 2018, www.uni-engagement.com) These surveys focused on European trends and devoted less attention to national pictures. Most Hungarian organisations responded to fewer questions than organisations from advanced countries, and so the comparison between Hungary and the European average may be rough. That study dealt with the second most important engagement—‘student mobility’—whilst, according to interviews, collaboration in education is most important and student mobility is only a part of BUC in education.

  13. 13.

    European arguments also favour the inclusion of BUC activities in evaluation, but Hungary has introduced none of these notions.

  14. 14.

    It is difficult to compare internationally as the Hungarian definition differs from that of most OECD countries.

  15. 15.

    Of course this avoiding technique has not only advantages but disadvantages also.

  16. 16.

    BUC is important in education and training also, as mentioned earlier, but this short chapter focuses only on R&D.

  17. 17.

    Most R&D collaboration targets the adapting of products new to the local company and to different types of customer. Adaptation-related activities are also important but are less relevant for research universities. Their investigation goes beyond the scope of this chapter.

  18. 18.

    EIT is one of the European Joint Research Centre. www.eitdigital.eu.

  19. 19.

    The EIT Digital Budapest is a Pan-European Organisation which is located in the Central and Eastern European region. The consortium includes 2 leading universities (ELTE and BME) 1 research centre of HAS and 8 leading IT companies (4 corporates: Ericsson, T-Com, OTP bank, Nokia, 3 SMEs and 1 start-up). EIT Digital is networking with leading European ICT institutions: 42 universities, 26 research institutes and 74 industrial partners, involving the CEE region into EIT Digital’s efforts to leverage European digital innovation.

  20. 20.

    The administrative data on contracts would be a good basis for information on BUC and its details. The universities are reluctant to process them for research purposes.

  21. 21.

    Without going into more detail on definition problems, we would like to emphasise here that not all types of testing belong to experimental development. Some are derived from R&D activities, although universities usually count them as R&D activities.

  22. 22.

    BME-FIEK program includes 5 university-laboratories that are working on collaborative projects. The laboratories belong to the faculties for their long-term sustainability. They participate in education (First Mission), academic research (Second Mission) and collaborative R&D with companies (Third Mission).

    BME-FIEK function is joining forces in R&D, serving the demand of consortium member businesses (Richter, Siemens, Nokia, MVM Group) and manages the demand of new business clients, connecting them with researchers. FIEK encourages synergies between different areas.

  23. 23.

    Just to illustrate the impact of the shortage of R&D personnel as a strong motivation for BUC, we may mention that MNC-1 is recruiting Ph.D. degree holders from abroad.

Abbreviations

BME:

Budapest University of Technology and Economics

BUC:

Business-university collaboration

BERD:

Business R&D expenditure

CWUR:

Centre for World University Rankings

EIT:

European Institute of Innovation and Technology

ELTE:

Eötvös Loránd University

EPO:

European Patent Office

EU:

European Union

FDI:

Foreign direct investment

FIEK:

Higher Education and Industry Cooperation Centres

GDP:

Gross domestic product

HCSO:

Hungarian Central Statistical Office

HE:

Higher Education

HEIs:

Higher Education Institutes

HERD:

Higher education R&D

HQ:

Head quarter

HUF:

Hungarian Forint (currency)

Industry 4.0:

Fourth Industrial Revolution

IPRs:

Intellectual Property Rights

MSTI:

Main Science and Technology Indicators

MNC:

Multinational Company

NIS:

National innovation system

NKFIH:

National Research, Development and Innovation Office

OECD:

The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development 

R&D:

Research and development

RDI:

Research, development and innovation

S&T:

Science and technology

SME:

Small and Medium Enterprise

TTO:

Technology Transfer Office

TH:

Triple Helix

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  1. IKU Innovation Research Centre, Financial Research Co., Budapest, Hungary

    Annamaria Inzelt

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  1. Annamaria Inzelt
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  1. Rutgers University, Newark, NJ, USA

    John Cantwell

  2. Kokushikan University, Tokyo, Japan

    Takabumi Hayashi

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Inzelt, A. (2019). Business-University Collaboration in a Developing Country in the Industry 4.0 Era—The Case of Hungary. In: Cantwell, J., Hayashi, T. (eds) Paradigm Shift in Technologies and Innovation Systems. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-32-9350-2_7

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