University-Industry R&D Collaboration in Korea's National Innovation System

Abstract

This article investigates R&D collaboration between universities and firms by looking at R&D outsourcing of private firms to universities and vice versa. It was found that universities are an important research partner of private firms, although industrialists often do not trust the research capabilities of universities. It is evident that universities are accustomed to receiving agents rather than giving agents in R&D activities. This fact implies that a give-and-take culture should be cultivated in universities in order to develop university-industry R&D collaboration. It may bring about university-generated cooperative R&D with private firms if universities contract out more of their research projects to private firms.The results of our study also revealed that government policies to promote university-industry R&D cooperation have been strengthening. Two cases of government policy programmes showed that policy targets, especially to promote university-industry R&D collaboration, tend to be included not only in incumbent policy programmes but also in newly designed policy programmes. The government R&D budget has been increasingly allocated to specific policy programmes focusing on interdisciplinary cooperative R&D activities between universities and private firms. © 2014 SAGE Publications.