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319
OVER THE PAST decade higher education institutions in South Africa, like
their global counterparts in both developed and developing worlds, are
* This article was first presented at the Globelics Africa 2005 conference, held at Tshwane
University of Technology, South Africa, 14 November 2005. The contribution of Gilton
Klerck and Shane Godfrey to the initial analysis of the cases, and of Wendy Annecke, Michael
Cosser, Carel Garisch, Candice Harrison, Gilton Klerck and Rachmat Omar, who conducted
the empirical case studies, is gratefully acknowledged.
Glenda Kruss is Chief Research Specialist, Education, Science and Skills, Development
Research Programme, Human Sciences Research Council, Private Bag X 9182, Cape
Town 8001, South Africa. E-mail: gkruss@hsrc.ac.za.
Science, Technology & Society 11:2 (2006)
SAGE PUBLICATIONS NEW DELHI/THOUSAND OAKS/LONDON
DOI: 10.1177/097172180601100203
321
the Human Sciences Research Council between 2001 and 2004. Research
focused on three cutting-edge high-technology bands identified in national Foresight Studies as priorities for developing a national system of
innovation, enhancing global competitiveness and economic growth,
namely, ICT, biotechnology and new materials development (DACST
1999). One component of the study attempted to illuminate the governments role in promoting research partnership by conducting an audit of
the contribution and products of two key vehicles for incentivisation,
the Innovation Fund, and the Technology and Human Resources for Industry Programme (THRIP) (HSRC 2003).
A second component investigated the scale and forms of research partnership currently evident across the higher education landscape in hightechnology fields (Kruss 2005). This study argued that South African
forms of partnership are shaped differentially by the intersecting financial
and intellectual imperatives driving both industry and higher education.
A complex combination of old and new forms of partnership may coexist
in any higher education institution, in a department and, indeed, even
within a single research entity to meet a variety of purposes (ibid.). These
will be briefly described here to explain the current focus on the specific
form of knowledge networks.
There are traditional forms of partnership between industry and higher
education that have long existed and continue to be found on a small
scale at present in South Africa such as donations, philanthropy on the
part of industry or sponsorship, with postgraduate student research funding a core focus. In these forms of partnership the relationship is primarily
limited to a financial one, and higher education is left free to continue
with its intellectual projects, with few conditions imposed by its industry
partners.
Numerically, old forms of partnership are newly dominant across the
system. Consultancies and contracts have long existed, but over the last
decade have increased across the higher education system on a significantly larger scale than before. In consultancies typically an individual
researcher in higher education acts in an advisory capacity to address
the immediate knowledge or technology problems of an industry, usually
in exchange for individual financial benefit. Contracts may be linked to
solving potentially interesting scientific problems or, more probable, likewise to addressing a specific immediate industry problem. They are primarily shaped by the need to attract funding for research on the part of
higher education, and by a specific product or process problem that the
industry partner wishes to have resolved. Design solutions are a related
323
For comparative purposes it is useful to begin with a snapshot of contribution of the South African higher education sector to research and innovation.
In 20034 gross domestic expenditure on R&D in South Africa was
R 10,082.6 million, representing 0.81 per cente of GDP (DST 2005: 7).
The higher education sector accounted for 20.5 per cent of the national
R&D expenditure, with the business sector contributing the lions share
at 55.5 per cent and the government sector (including science councils)
21.9 per cent (ibid.: 21). Table 1 illustrates trends in the higher education sector since the advent of a democratic government, highlighting
the multiple challenges institutions and researchers face. While the total
permanent academic staff complement has remained constant, the total
headcount of student enrolment has grown significantly, particularly the
total postgraduate enrolment. In 2003 the total enrolment across the higher
education system was 717,793 students, which represents a gross participation rate of 16.3 per cent of the 20- to 24-year age group (Steyn and
De Villiers 2006). However, the doctoral enrolment critical to renewal
of the academic labour force has grown more slowly, and does not represent a large pool of potential academics.
An increasing proportion of higher education research expenditure
comes from contract income, that is, largely through contract and consultancy forms of partnership with industry (and government). In this context, concern has been expressed that accredited publication rates have
remained fairly static, and that accredited publications tend to be produced
by an ageing, white male academic population (COHORT 2004). Between
2003 and 2005 the twenty-one universities and fourteen technikons were
merged and restructured to create twenty-two new institutions that are
proposed to be more appropriate to addressing higher education transformation goals,2 creating new opportunities and challenges.
R 4,072,100,000
14,065
21,908 masters
5,095 Ph.D.s
537,541
Not available
R 288.1m 54% of
higher education
R&D expenditure
5,499.79 accredited
publication units
Government appropriation
Permanent academic staff
Postgraduate headcount enrolment
at universities
Total enrolment
% national R&D expenditureii
Contract R&D income within higher
education sectoriii
R 7,072,100,000
14,789
29,753 masters
5,871 Ph.D.s
579,254
25% (2001)
R 637.4m 58% of
higher education
R&D expenditure
5,513 accredited
publication units
21 universities
14 technikons
2000/2001
5,639.50 accredited
publication units
2003
Source: Compiled from Department of Education (2005) and research output data supplied to author. (Note that some institutions have not yet
submitted data for 2003; hence, data for 2002 was used as an indication of their productivity).
Notes: i Technikons were redesignated universities of technology in October 2003. Comprehensive institutions are a new form of higher education
that combines both university and technikon programmes and roles.
ii
This data is derived from the National Survey of Research and Experimental Development conducted in the 20012 and 20034 fiscal
years. The previous survey with comparable methodology and data was conducted in 199192. See also Kahn (2006).
iii
This data is derived from a survey of higher education institutions conducted by the Centre for Research on Science and Technology at the
University of Stellenbosch.
iv
Data for 1995 and 2000 derived from Department of Education (2005). Data for 2003 supplied to author by Department of Education.
21 universities
15 technikons
1995
TABLE 1
Trends in South African Higher Education and Innovation
325
Significantly, South Africa mirrors the global trend that a small number
of universities are responsible for the majority of high-level research
outputs (Steyn and De Villiers 2006: 133). However, in this context, uneven capacity arises from different historical legacies and modes of operation in the apartheid era. The universities and technikons in South Africa,
thus, differ in their response to the partnership imperative, and in their
ability to harness the innovation potential of their research in the interests
of development. Table 2 groups the thirty-five higher education institutions
at the time of the empirical study in 2003 according to their institutional
response to the partnership imperative (see Kruss 2005). The categories
are based on the extent to which universities and technikons have a structured3 or unstructured institutional response to industry research partnership, and whether they have a sound or an emergent or a newly developing
research capacity. The data reflects differential research and innovation
capacity, as measured in the size of enrolments, the permanent academic
staff complement, the number of accredited research outputs, and the
number of scientists rated by the National Research Foundation. It illustrates the small number of institutions with relatively strong research
capacity that are able to compete globally, and the small number of institutions that have actively adopted an entrepreneurial approach. What is
also notable is an emergent alternative trend on the part of a few historically black universities to harness their developing research potential
through research networks in the service of poverty alleviation and community development in the most rural and isolated areas of South Africa.
The largest group of institutions has laissez-faire approaches to partnerships, in that they do not have dedicated strategies, structures or support
mechanisms, but there is a significant number of institutions that aspire
to develop their research capacity and the scale of partnership with industry.
Groups of institutions share similar patterns of partnership in the hightechnology fields, with only a minority able to host or lead knowledge
networks. Understanding the differential capacity and research management approach of universities and technikons is, thus, key to understanding the ways in which knowledge networks are created.
A Contextualised Approach to Understanding Networks
41,951
21,398
20,533
24,250
31,925
24,498
21,984
27,729
8,883
41,835
9,842
7,526
14,043
14,485
15,234
20,952
16,295
15,942
Laissez-faire traditional
Witwatersrand University
Natal University
Rand Afrikaans University
Emergent entrepreneurial
University of Free State
Potchefstroom University
Technikon Free State
Pretoria Technikon
Port Elizabeth Technikon
Laissez-faire aspirational
Rhodes University
University of Western Cape
University of Port Elizabeth
Witwatersrand Technikon
Durban Institute of Technology
Cape Technikon
Vaal Triangle Technikon
Enrolment (2003)
334
448
267
383
544
345
308
517
531
145
550
248
448
1,058
432
1,524
809
779
Permanent academic
staff (2003)
41
49
37
3
8
3
1
75
64
3
11
9
132
130
55
157
199
213
NRF rated
researchers (2003)
TABLE 2
Indicators of Performance in South African Universities and Technikons
169.19
100.28
123.26
15.70
26.65
20.41
4.68
334.38
209.98 (2002)
21.37
69.83 (2002)
32.22
566.90
704.13
277.45
958.80
630.15
563.71
Total research
output (2003)
11,270
6,405
9,484
10,774
8,667
6,479
9,178
5,731
8,526
8,027
345
190
268
342
184
170
242
146
173
147
227
107
176
214
1,306
23
5
3
7
2
3
5
0
0
0
0
0
5
3
52
2
6
119.85 (2002)
74.22
23.91
63.35
4.16 (2002)
14.40
61.02
6.80
0.00
5.96
1.00 (2002)
4.75(2002)
10.66 (2002)
12.40
435.32
50.09
56.76 (2002)
Source: Compiled from Department of Education 2005 and Research Output data supplied to author (Note that some institutions have not yet
submitted data for 2003, hence, data for 2002 was used as an indication of their productivity).
717,793
13,024
5,093
50,875
9,793
1,090
413
430
Total
150,533
3,883
20,746
329
the complexity of the interface within the network, with the potential for
conflict, tension and power asymmetries.
Thus, analysis began from a socialised account of the partners at the
three nodes constituting the networkthe enterprise/s, the research entity/s based in universities or technikons, and the intermediary partners
such as science councils, funding or regulatory bodies, whether public
or private sector. Castells (1996) contributed two further useful concepts,
that a networks performance will depend on its connectedness, on a
structure to enable communication between its component parts, and on
its consistency, a sharing of interests between the networks goals and
the goals of its component parts. The research attempted to understand
what drives participants to pursue a network, how it is structured, how
they interact, how each benefits, and what the limitations of power asymmetries on the network are, against an understanding of the respective
institutional contexts of the (multiple) partners at each node.
The following sections focus on cases in the biotechnology sector,
being relatively new in South Africa, and, by way of contrast, in the relatively mature new materials development sector. It shows the complex
nature of the partners at each node of the network, and of the structure
and dynamics of the network interaction that result.
The seven cases illustrate the complex ways in which the structure and
nature of networks are shaped by the embedded nature of each partner,
of the policy, industrial and university contexts in which enterprises and
research entities collaborating in biotechnology or new materials development research operate. In the process they highlight the richness and
variability of South African higher education responses to contemporary
challenges. Table 3 provides an overview of the focus and partners in each
case, and is intended as a useful reference point throughout.4
Multiple Layers of Determinants
Wellcome Trust
SA Bioinformatics
Institute, University of
Western Cape; European
Bioinformatics Institute;
Sanger Institute,
Wellcome Trust
Medium term:
research well
established,
collaboration since
1997
Develop
bioinformatics
software for gene
detection and
expression states
Bioinformatics
Electric Genetics
Innovation Fund;
Department of Agriculture/
Water Affairs
Medium term;
Innovation Fund
project of finite
duration (20002003):
shift to
commercialisation?
Develop process
for large-scale
production of
AMF inoculants
that increase
growth, yield or
fitness of plants
Partners at the
intermediary node
Mycorrizhal
Partners at the
industry node
Water Membrane
Amatola Water Board Water Research
Commission
Technology Group,
Durban Institute of
Technology, Institute of
Polymer Science,
Stellenbosch University;
Pollution Research Group,
University of Natal
Partners at the
higher education node
Formation
and duration
Water membrane
Focus of
partnership
TABLE 3
A Comparative Overview of the Network Cases
Short-term: duration
Centre for Electroof masters study only Chemistry and Centre of
Material and Process
Synthesis, Witwatersrand
University
Port Elizabeth Technikon
Catalysis Research Unit;
Catalysis Research Unit,
University of Cape Town
Institute of Applied
Materials, University of
Pretoria; network of
European research
institutions
Medium term:
recently established
collaboration,
research established
Medium term:
recently established
THRIP project,
research well
established
Upstream process
to enhance
recovery of
platinum
Downstream
processes and
products, to grow
market for
beneficiation of
phenolics
Downstream
processes and
products, to grow
market for
applications of
cornstarch
Recovery of metals
Phenolics
Starch-based
plastics THRIP
20023
Long-term research
record (since 1970s)
and long-standing
collaboration
Upstream process
to improve tree
production by
controlling
pathogens
Tree protection
None
African Products;
Xyris Technology
Merisol; Sasol;
Merichem;
Gradchem Solutions
Anglo-Platinum
enterprise operates, the dynamics of competition operating, and the centrality of research and innovation to a companys competitive strategy
or insertion in a value chain in order to understand what drives or constrains individual firms to seek research networks. These dynamics differ
with the maturity of industrial sectors, of the technology fields on which
they draw, and of the supportive policy context within which they operate.
However, the conditions created by government policy steering mechanisms to promote science and technology, innovation and partnership
impacts in various ways on what is possible. The extent to which the higher
education context in which a research entity is located was supportive of
partnershipsin terms of managerial, administrative, financial and intellectual property frameworksfurther determined which institutions were
favoured in creating networks, as did the reputation of the individual
academic champion and the research entity itself. These claims will be
substantiated later, through brief descriptions of the two sets of cases.
Four Biotechnology Cases: From Enhancing
Agricultural Products to Bioinformatics
Biotechnology in South Africa is historically well established in firstand second-generation activities, but there is not yet significant industrial
development drawing on third-generation technology. This may change
in the light of a strong government policy commitment to build a bioeconomy as part of a national strategy for enhancing global competitiveness
(see Mboniswa 2002; Walwyn 2003). For instance, the development of a
National Biotechnology Strategy (DACST 2002b) has framed the establishment of three Biotechnology Regional Innovation Centres, national
support structures such as a National Bioinformatics Network, and the
allocation of considerable funding through programmes such as THRIP
and the Innovation Fund. Such initiatives provide a substantive policy
and financial environment to support the efforts of individual institutions
and enterprises.
Here we found networks incentivised by government schemes to collaborate around strategic research leading to commercialisation, as well
as pre-competitive research to improve the quality of upstream products
and processes. The locus of control driving the creation of these four
networks lies more strongly in the university itself than do the networks
in new materials development. This is in the face of a small, emerging
industrial sector in South Africa, and given the nature of the bioeconomy
globally, which has its roots in technology transfer and spin-offs from
333
The enterprise partners are public water boards whose primary research
role is limited largely to field testing and fine-tuning of the system. The
first client, the Amatola Water Board, provides the necessary facilities
and assists in sorting out minor problems in the filtration system. As such,
it provides the technology with the record of accomplishment necessary
for viable commercialisation. In turn their links with higher education
partners allow for less R&D staff and encourage greater involvement in
skills transfer and socio-economic upliftment, and allows the enterprise
to evade many of the costs and risks associated with the development
of new technologies. However, it was clear that by simply outsourcing
R&D functions to the higher education sector, industry may compromise
its capacity to absorb the knowledge necessary for product and process
innovations.
A commercially viable filtration system has important social benefits
in improving access to safe, high-quality water, particularly for small
rural communities, with considerable operating benefits. The network
structure is long-standing, and part of a wider network, which has been
fluid over time, involving the partners in stronger or weaker collaboration,
depending on the specific problem being addressed. At the heart of the
dynamics of operation of the network are the strong personal ties between
the leaders of the two research entities. The meshing of skills (that is,
analytical skills from the university, applied skills from the technikons,
and technical skills from the Amatola Water Board) and associated knowledge transfers were regarded as vital ingredients for the success. A further
beneficial aspect as noted by these researchers is that the network has
facilitated greater interaction between historically white and black higher
education institutions, and between higher education and the community.
The primary outcomes of the network are the training and employment
of students, the registration of patents, and the development of innovative
products. The partners are currently attempting to establish the commercial viability of the new technology in order to attract significant venture
capital, at which point, in terms of a memorandum of understanding,
there are plans to form a joint venture to regulate relations, while the
technology will be licensed to users through the Water Research
Commission.
The Mycorrhizal Network
335
AMF are either increased growth and yield of crops, or improved fitness
to conditions (such as drought stress tolerance). The network is organised
as a consortium, driven by relatively autonomous multidisciplinary teams
primarily based in five universities around the country, at considerable
distance from one another. The focus is on the innovation of process and
techniques, and on accruing intellectual property rights for the isolation
and large-scale production of indigenous AMF inoculants for application
in a range of sectors as a basis for commercialisation. The research is
facilitated by government incentivisation funding in the form of the Innovation Fund, which influences the formal, contractual structure of the network. Full funding for the research was obtained for a period of three
years, ending in December 2003.
The network structure is shaped by its dual status as intellectual property development enterprise and Innovation Fund project administrative
vehicle, and it could be described as constituting a R&D company, which
is run as a business. However, its primary focus at this stage is research
and not profit.
The enterprise partners, agricultural concerns, have a limited role in
monitoring of field trials and collection of data, while the universitybased researchers interpret the results with a view to product validation.
These enterprises act more like prospective clients than knowledge-based
network partners, leading to greater higher education insularity in the
structure of this network. Intermediary organisations also do not influence
the nature and direction of research activities in a direct way, and in effect operate as secondary enterprise partners or prospective clients. For
example, the relationship with Agricultural Research Council research
institutes involves applied mycorrhizal research such as investigating
the application of mycorrhisa in the case of emerging farmers who cannot
afford fertilisers, as well as collaboration around field trials.
At the time of the research the network was faced with the challenge
of reconstituting itself as a fully-fledged commercial entity, a process
that has complex legal implications and far-reaching consequences for
its future. Although by all accounts very good results have been obtained,
commercialisation is still some way off because of the variable status of
field trials. The network faces critical challenges and tensions in terms
of developing a market for their product, accessing capital to move from
the R&D to the commercialisation phase, and distributing ownership of
intellectual property rights amongst the partners. Of note are difficulties
in securing bridging finance or venture capital, attributed to the fact that
very little product awareness exists within the agricultural sector. Thus,
apart from the increasing number of postgraduate students entering
mycorrhizal research programmes, there are not yet tangible products
emanating from this network, which illustrates the considerable difficulties of commercialisation and university-driven knowledge networks.
The Tree Protection Network
337
provides a mechanism for achieving stakeholder objectives that one partner could not achieve on its own.
This case illustrates that networks are not established overnight, but
take time to develop and to flourish. While the network was formalised
in 1990, the key research that underpinned its establishment had been
ongoing for at least fifteen years prior. Such biotechnology needs greater
infrastructural investment, in the form of sustainable specialist business
development, in order to take root in South Africa. There are indications
that the network is a fertile breeding ground for a body of knowledge
that, without proper nurturing, may either leave the country or mutate
into other kinds of competencebiotechnologists becoming managers
or moving sideways into other disciplinesin the absence of a vibrant
biotechnology industry in the country.
The Bioinformatics Network
The bioinformatics network is based at a historically disadvantaged university, the University of the Western Cape (UWC). The research entity,
the South African Bioinformatics Institute (SANBI), works in collaboration
with a spin-off company, Electric Genetics, and international researchers,
facilitated by government incentivisation funding and sponsorship from
an international trust formed by a multinational pharmaceutical corporation. In 2001 there were only five bioinformatics professors in South
Africa, three of whom were at SANBI, at that time the only formal centre
of bioinformatics in South Africa. Electric Genetics was originally founded
in 1997 as a spin-off company to commercialise technologies for analysing
the human genome developed at SANBI, and is the first bioinformatics
company in South Africa. The UWC is a 1 per cent shareholder in the
company and receives royalties for products developed in partnership
between the company and the SANBI.5
The research at the heart of the network focuses on using cutting-edge
technology in bioinformatics to generate solutions to biological research
problems and to contribute to the development of software that will speed
up genetic and biotechnology research. The research institute generates
new knowledge, which is commercialised and sold by the spin-off company, largely to pharmaceutical companies to reduce the risks and costs
associated with their R&D. The two organisations have created a fast,
open source development process whereby tools are designed and rapidly
prototyped. One tangible output of the project is EnsMart, a data retrieval
tool that generates lists of biological objects (for example, genes) from
339
In contrast, new materials development is a more mature field than biotechnology in South Africa, both in terms of research and in relation to
the industrial sectors with which it is involved. However, government
policy and financial support for the sector was cut in the early 1990s,
leading to a loss of the research capacity built up in the apartheid era,
given the strategic emphasis on materials research for the military, energy
self-sufficiency and food security sectors (Knutsen 2002). Knutsen argues
that many established industry partnerships disappeared, the existing
materials capacity was significantly eroded, and the research community
fragmented into pockets of activity. There are recent signsfor example,
the development of an Advanced Manufacturing Technology Strategy
(AMTS 2003) and the formation of a South African Nanotechnology
Initiative (2002)that the situation is beginning to change. There are
exciting instances of network collaboration around fundamental and strategic research to expand downstream applications of primary resources
to create new markets, but at the same time there are signs that old contract
forms of partnership continue to operate in ways that are not entirely
beneficial to the interests of the higher education partner.
The new materials development networks differ from the biotechnology networks, particularly in terms of the degree of secrecy surrounding
the research.6 Indeed, although selected as a network, it became evident
that one case, the recovery of metals, in fact operated as the older organisational form of a dyadic contract partnership. In a mature industry such
as platinum mining, the enterprise has chosen a strategy of improving
recovery operations to address the inefficiency of a specific upstream
operation in order to enhance competitiveness. The company has significant R&D capacity, but not in relation to the electrochemical recovery
of minerals, hence, it turned to a university that offers such research capacity. The relationship is governed by strong confidentiality agreements,
and is essentially limited to supervision of the masters theses of two
employees of the enterprise. There is virtually no collaboration between
the industry and higher education partners around knowledge creation,
and both the university and the students are severely restricted in terms
of publishing the research in order not to infringe the companys proprietary knowledge and future competitiveness.
The New Materials Cases: Enhancing Downstream Applications
Starch-based Plastic Compounds Network
341
343
Essentially, in these cases knowledge networks are created when enterpriseslarge or small7are willing to enter into cooperative alliances
with higher education and intermediary partners, to meet their complex
knowledge and technology needs, in order to enhance future competitiveness. Or they happen when entrepreneurial academics enter into
cooperative alliances with higher education, industry and intermediary
partners to meet their complex knowledge and technology needs in order
to commercialise their knowledge products. As Klerck (2003) has phrased
it, the dynamics of competition in a particular product market or industrial
sector are closely linked to the dynamics of cooperation found.
Of course, the knowledge and technology needs of the enterprise do
not shape the structure and dynamics of a network alone. Rather, they
intersect with the levels of expertise in higher education, in terms of the
existence of a critical mass of academics in a research specialism, but
equally with the motivation for and tacit knowledge of managing research
partnerships with industry. The cases show that this is usually embodied
in an academic entrepreneur, who is the linchpin in ensuring the connectedness of many of the networks. Closely linked is the significance
of centralised higher education institutional support, whether financial,
legal or administrative. Higher education institutions with strong research
expertise and management structures appear to be more effective in supporting academics in the creation and maintenance of networks.
The involvement of an intermediary partner drawn from the public
sector in a range of ways provides a further layer of complexity that may
intersect to determine whether a network is created, and the specific
structure and dynamics of its functioning. The intermediaries take a number of forms. Actively involved in funding, knowledge generation or even
commercialisation, were market-driven government science councils such
as the CSIR. Government departments or agencies such as the Water Research Commission were involved in directly funding and shaping the
direction of research, or even in mediating relationships within the network. More passively involved in funding only, shaping the formal contractual structure of networks, were government funding programmes
such as THRIP, the Innovation Fund or the Godisa incubator schemes,
and international government agencies with bilateral agreements.
The intersection of interestsor consistencygives all partners a stake
in the research project at the heart of the network, and builds the levels
345
better coordination of the mechanisms and programmes adopted by different government departments to promote research and innovation in
the higher education sector. It may inform regional innovation strategies
in the light of growing evidence to suggest the significance of provincial
and local government levels.
Such an understanding is equally significant for research managers
and leaders in higher education institutions to facilitate cross-sectoral
interventions across the system. Individual institutions need to develop
their own internal institutional coordinating strategies and mechanisms,
to promote network forms of partnership across a greater spread of their
research entities. National higher education associations need to coordinate strategies more effectively across the sector. The full implications
of the analysis for the strategies and practices of higher education, however, must remain the subject of another article.
Thus, in conclusion, the major insight offered for countries grappling
with similar challenges and dynamics is the value of undertaking such a
contextualised analysis. The ideal enshrined in South African policy, of
the desirability of partnership between higher education and industry,
was subjected to an empirically informed analysis of the complexity of
creating knowledge networks. Analysis of the cases underscores the value
of researching what drives enterprises in specific industrial sectors, researchers in universities with differentiated research and innovation capacity, and intermediary partners with diverse public goals, to seek network
forms of partnership. Understanding the embedded nature of network
creation and dynamics, and the success or limitations that result, can inform how mutually beneficial networks may be facilitated by better targetted, more nuanced cross-sectoral interventions.
NOTES
1.
2.
3.
Innovation: The application in practice of creative new ideas, which in many cases
involves the introduction of inventions into the marketplace. In contrast, creativity is
the generating and articulating of new ideas. It follows that people can be creative
without being innovative. They may have ideas, or produce inventions, but may not
try to win broad acceptance for them, put them to use or exploit them by turning their
ideas into products and services that other people will buy or use (DACST 1996: 15).
The system now consists of eleven universities, six comprehensive universities and
five universities of technology (see Council on Higher Education 2004).
For instance, research, intellectual property or partnership policies, research management offices, technology transfer offices or commercialisation offices.
5.
6.
7.
347
For each case study an institutional profile of partner organisations at the three nodes
was compiled, from Web sites and interviews. Semi-structured face-to-face interviews
were conducted with senior management and research staff at the primary university,
industry and intermediary partners, and telephonic interviews were conducted with
the subsidiary partners. The interviews focused on developing a profile of the partner
and on understanding of the dynamics of the network. A case study report was compiled, and comparative analysis of the cases in a specific technology field against the
policy and industrial sector context was first conducted, followed by a comparative
analysis of trends in the three fields.
So far UWC is reported to have received close to R 1.5 million from Electric Genetics
(Business Day 2003).
A number of networks selected for inclusion refused to participate in the study on
grounds of confidentiality agreements surrounding their research.
Firm size is commonly believed to influence the nature of networks, but the evidence
from the cases supports Audretschs (2003) argument that the relative innovative advantage of small and large firms varies across industries. However, he shows that the
evidence increasingly suggests that strategic partnerships may be more important for
smaller firms than for larger corporations with access to their own R&D. In the South
African case 66 per cent of THRIP industry partners in biotechnology were SMMEs,
58 per cent in ICT and 51 per cent in new materials projects (HSRC 2003).
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349
Further Readings
Adam, R. (2003), The National R&D Strategy and Utilisation of Research Findings.
Presented at NACI Conference, 9 October, Midrand, South Africa.
Boshoff, N. and J. Mouton (2003), Science Policy Indicators, in HSRC, in Human Resources Development: Education, Employment and Skills in South Africa. Pretoria:
HSRC Press and East Lansing: Michigan State University Press.
Itzkin, E. (2000), How to Compete in the Perpetual Innovation Economy, South African
Journal of Information Management, 2(1), pp. 110.
Lorentzen, J., A. Paterson, G. Kruss and F. Arends (2005), Warm Bodies, Cool Minds:
Counting Innovative Human Capital in South Africa. Presented at DRUID 10th
Anniversary Conference, Copenhagen Business School.
National Research Foundation, South Africa (2005), Facts and Figures 2005. The NRF
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