Mode 1, Mode 2, and Innovation

Introduction

It is too easily forgotten that it is only since World War II, that science – in the form of basic research – was taken up by the universities, transforming them into the major players in the forward march of science that they are today. In the beginning, it was through the persuasive efforts of Vannevar Bush and others that government in America and elsewhere decided to back universities as the prime sites for the research that would underpin technological innovation (Bush 1945, Etzkowitz and Leyersdorff 2000). As a result, universities and their research and training functions gradually moved to the foreground as the key institutions to supply the knowledge and manpower to drive economic progress. However, the establishment of research in universities took science in a specific direction, that is, down a route that would lead to the development of the academic disciplines and the administrative and financial structures to support it. The disciplinary structure of...