This article was downloaded by: [Harvard College] On: 04 October 2013, At: 13:03 Publisher: Routledge Informa Ltd Registered in England and Wales Registered Number: 1072954 Registered office: Mortimer House, 37-41 Mortimer Street, London W1T 3JH, UK Technology Analysis & Strategic Management Publication details, including instructions for authors and subscription information: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/ctas20 Balancing centripetal and centrifugal forces in the entrepreneurial university: a study of 10 research centres in a technical university Alexander Styhre a & Frida Lind b a School of Business, Economics and Law, University of Gothenburg, Sweden b Department of Technology Management and Economics, Chalmers University of Technology, Göteborg, Sweden Published online: 21 Oct 2010. To cite this article: Alexander Styhre & Frida Lind (2010) Balancing centripetal and centrifugal forces in the entrepreneurial university: a study of 10 research centres in a technical university, Technology Analysis & Strategic Management, 22:8, 909-924, DOI: 10.1080/09537325.2010.520471 To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/09537325.2010.520471 PLEASE SCROLL DOWN FOR ARTICLE Taylor & Francis makes every effort to ensure the accuracy of all the information (the “Content”) contained in the publications on our platform. However, Taylor & Francis, our agents, and our licensors make no representations or warranties whatsoever as to the accuracy, completeness, or suitability for any purpose of the Content. Any opinions and views expressed in this publication are the opinions and views of the authors, and are not the views of or endorsed by Taylor & Francis. The accuracy of the Content should not be relied upon and should be independently verified with primary sources of information. Taylor and Francis shall not be liable for any losses, actions, claims, proceedings, demands, costs, expenses, damages, and other liabilities whatsoever or howsoever caused arising directly or indirectly in connection with, in relation to or arising out of the use of the Content. This article may be used for research, teaching, and private study purposes. Any substantial or systematic reproduction, redistribution, reselling, loan, sub-licensing, systematic supply, or distribution in any form to anyone is expressly forbidden. Terms &
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This article was downloaded by: [Harvard College]On: 04 October 2013, At: 13:03Publisher: RoutledgeInforma Ltd Registered in England and Wales Registered Number: 1072954 Registeredoffice: Mortimer House, 37-41 Mortimer Street, London W1T 3JH, UK
Technology Analysis & StrategicManagementPublication details, including instructions for authors andsubscription information:http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/ctas20
Balancing centripetal and centrifugalforces in the entrepreneurialuniversity: a study of 10 researchcentres in a technical universityAlexander Styhre a & Frida Lind ba School of Business, Economics and Law, University ofGothenburg, Swedenb Department of Technology Management and Economics,Chalmers University of Technology, Göteborg, SwedenPublished online: 21 Oct 2010.
To cite this article: Alexander Styhre & Frida Lind (2010) Balancing centripetal and centrifugalforces in the entrepreneurial university: a study of 10 research centres in a technical university,Technology Analysis & Strategic Management, 22:8, 909-924, DOI: 10.1080/09537325.2010.520471
To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/09537325.2010.520471
PLEASE SCROLL DOWN FOR ARTICLE
Taylor & Francis makes every effort to ensure the accuracy of all the information (the“Content”) contained in the publications on our platform. However, Taylor & Francis,our agents, and our licensors make no representations or warranties whatsoever as tothe accuracy, completeness, or suitability for any purpose of the Content. Any opinionsand views expressed in this publication are the opinions and views of the authors,and are not the views of or endorsed by Taylor & Francis. The accuracy of the Contentshould not be relied upon and should be independently verified with primary sourcesof information. Taylor and Francis shall not be liable for any losses, actions, claims,proceedings, demands, costs, expenses, damages, and other liabilities whatsoever orhowsoever caused arising directly or indirectly in connection with, in relation to or arisingout of the use of the Content.
This article may be used for research, teaching, and private study purposes. Anysubstantial or systematic reproduction, redistribution, reselling, loan, sub-licensing,systematic supply, or distribution in any form to anyone is expressly forbidden. Terms &
Balancing centripetal and centrifugal forcesin the entrepreneurial university: a study of10 research centres in a technical university
Alexander Styhrea∗ and Frida Lindb
aSchool of Business, Economics and Law, University of Gothenburg, Sweden; bDepartment of Technology Managementand Economics, Chalmers University of Technology, Göteborg, Sweden
In the recent interest for the so-called entrepreneurial university, there is a strong emphasis onacademic (i.e. theoretical) knowledge to be used more effectively as a source of innovation andrenewal in industry. Drawing on a theoretical framework developed by the literature theoristMikhail Bakhtin and a study of 10 research centres in a major technical university, this papersuggests that rather than representing something radically new, the entrepreneurial universityis a domain wherein traditional academic research interests and industry objectives are con-tinuously negotiated and mutually adjusted. Seen in this view, the entrepreneurial university iswhat is always in a process of becoming, in flux and change, continuously under the influenceof opposing and complementary goals and objectives. Therefore, the entrepreneurial universityis not a solid state or an entrenched position but the effect of an attitude towards the role andpurpose of the university in the so-called knowledge society.
One of the most accentuated recent trends in the so-called knowledge economy is that the universityis being repositioned as a source of national and regional competitive advantage. Traditionally, theuniversity has been regarded as a ‘safe haven’for thoughtful reflection. The very concept of Skhole(in Greek) and Scolium (the Latin counterpart) means literally the ‘absence of, or freedom fromwork’ (Bourdieu 2000). Today (2010), in an economic regime where all resources available athand must be mobilised to maintain national and regional competitiveness, there are no longer anyopportunities for such enclosed domains of reflection detached from everyday life. The universityand its accumulated systematic knowledge becomes a source of competitive advantage. Studiesof, for instance, the biotechnology cluster in the Boston region in Massachusetts (Owen-Smithand Powell 2004) or the San Francisco Bay Area’s Silicon Valley computer industry cluster(Saxenian 1994) suggest that universities such as Harvard, MIT and Stanford play a central role
as a node in highly innovative regions and industries. In their analysis of innovations in networksof organisations, Powell and Grodal (2005, 58) claim that ‘complex networks of firms, univer-sities, and government labs are critical features of many industries, especially so in fields withrapid technological progress, such as computers, semiconductors, pharmaceuticals, and biotech-nology’. Universities today represent a repository of intellectual capital that needs to be effectivelyexploited in the market. However, universities have a long tradition, starting in the tenth centurywhen monasteries were transformed into universities in towns such as Padua, Bologna and Oxford(Le Goff 1993). Institutional changes are generally slow and come after significant efforts and thereis no reason to assume a priori that the transformation of universities into veritable productionresources for industry is devoid of debates and or even conflicts. For instance, in her harsh critiqueof the new ‘market-oriented’ university, Washburn (2005) argues that the traditional and histori-cally effective model for knowledge production and dissemination is gradually being replaced bya less effective system more concerned about protecting research findings than publically disclos-ing results and less willing to conceive of such results as what should be shared and circulated asa communal resource: ‘The emergence of a utilitarian, market-model university, combined with aloud drumbeat calling on schools to spur national and regional economic growth, now threatens toobliterate the distinctiveness of this economic research culture’, Washburn (2005, 196) contends.The emerging ‘entrepreneurial university’ is not devoid of controversies and discussions.
This paper presents a study of the organisation of 10 so-called research centres in a majortechnical university in Scandinavia. A research centre is a joint venture between the university,industry and governmental funding organisations, identifying some domain of research whereindustry and academy can benefit from collaborating. Rather than merely executing productdevelopment projects, a research centre is supposed to produce qualified academic research(i.e. academic journal papers and research monographs); at the same time, research centreshave the explicit objective to contribute to the advancement of innovations and to in generalto strengthen the competitiveness of industry. The research centres, representing a variety ofdisciplines and research areas including energy system technologies, mobile communication tech-nologies, railway transportation engineering and catalyst technologies, do therefore have a dualrole to both serve industry and the community of academic researchers. Drawing on the writingsof the Russian literature theorists Mikhail Bakhtin (1981, 1984, 1986), university researchers aretherefore exposed to both centrifugal and centripetal forces in their day-to-day work. In whatBakhtin calls the heteroglossia of language, every word and utterance is subject to the influenceof centripetal forces that unify meanings and centrifugal forces that disturb and disrupt meaning(Jabri 2004, 575); ‘centripetal forces push/towards unity, agreement and monologue, while thecentrifugal forces seeks multiplicity, disagreement and heteroglossia’, Shotter and Billig (1998,16) suggest. Language is for Bakhtin what is always precarious, always at the verge of fallingapart. The use of language is based on conventions that can easily be overturned. The heteroglossiaof language is therefore what is always already present in speech; speech is therefore dialogic,always inherently communicative and oriented towards the other. There are no genuine mono-logues for Bakhtin; language is per se filled with innate tensions and ruptures. The concepts ofcentripetal and centrifugal forces have been used in studies of innovation work by Sheremata(2000) claiming that the centrifugal forces are ‘structural elements and processes’ that increasethe quality of the ‘ideas, knowledge, and information an organization can access’ (Sheremata2000, 395; emphasis in the original omitted) and that centripetal forces are structural elementsand processes that ‘integrate dispersed information, knowledge, and ideas into collective action’(Sheremata 2000, 398; emphasis in the original omitted). Innovation work is on the one handbased on a diverse set of ideas and models; on the other hand, these ideas need to be selected
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Balancing centripetal and centrifugal forces in the entrepreneurial university 911
and further advanced to eventually result in an actual product. Balancing the centrifugal and cen-tripetal forces is therefore one of the principal challenges in innovation management, Sheremata(2000) suggests. In the case of the scientists participating in research centre activities, the cen-trifugal forces are conceptualised of the totality of market opportunities and challenges broughtinto their day-to-day work by the industry partners, that is, the possibilities for exploiting theirformal and structural know-how, a specific form of scientific knowledge that Frank and Meyer(2007, 301) refer to as ‘distinctive packages of universals’. The centripetal forces are the totalityof institutions and cultural cues that regulate and maintain the identity and day-to-day practices ofacademic researchers, that is, the ontological and epistemological assumptions, the methodolog-ical choices and the political positioning of academic research that are enacted in the communityof professional academic researchers. On the one hand, academic researchers working in researchcentres are exposed to centrifugal forces that seek to exploit their accumulated know-how in thedevelopment of actual products. On the other hand, academic researchers are working under theinfluence of instituted ideologies, beliefs and assumptions on how credible knowledge is pro-duced through the adherence to systematic methods and standard operational procedures. Beinglocated in research centres that are by definition on the borderline between the conventional aca-demic research organisation and the activities of industry implies operating under the pressure tobalance and negotiate the centrifugal and centripetal forces. For some researchers, this is only amarginal concern while for other groups there are significant hurdles that needs to be overcometo collaborate fully with industry representatives. The study suggests that what has been calledthe ‘entrepreneurial professor’ capable of balancing the two opposing forces is a specific form ofcompetence that needs to be appropriated and trained through experience.
This paper is structured accordingly: first, the concept of the entrepreneurial university isintroduced. Second, the methodology of the study is accounted for. Thereafter, the empiricalmaterial is presented and, finally, some implications are discussed.
The emerging entrepreneurial university
A number of commentators have discussed the new role of the university in the knowledgeeconomy and in the new regime of innovation work embedded in networks including firms,universities, research institutes and non-governmental organisations (Louis et al. 1989; Moweryand Ziedonis 2002; Zucker, Darby andArmstrong 2002; Czarniawska and Genell 2002; Etzkowitz2003; Bozeman and Boardman 2004; Murray 2004; Bartunek 2007; Vestergaard 2007; Markides2007; Nerkar and Shane 2007; Bercovitz and Feldman 2008; Toker and Gray 2008; Yusuf 2008).Etzkowitz (1998) speaks about what he refers to as the ‘entrepreneurial university’, the universitycapable of integrating ‘economic development’ as an ‘academic function along with teachingand research’ (Etzkowitz 1998, 833). The entrepreneurial university is in Etzkowitz’s (1998)perspective ‘an economic actor in its own right’, a force to count with in the new economic regime.However, as Rothaermel, Agung and Jiang (2007, 700) emphasise in their extensive review of theliterature on the entrepreneurial university, ‘university entrepreneurship’has to date been more thedomain of public policy researchers than management scholars, for instance entrepreneurship andstrategy researchers. As a consequence, only a limited number of actual studies of how ‘universityentrepreneurship’is practiced are available. Rothaermel,Agung and Jiang (2007) conclude in theirliterature review that the research on the entrepreneurial university remains ‘fragmented’:
Research on university entrepreneurship is clearly burgeoning, yet it remains a fragmented field.Currently, no literature review exists that specifically focuses on university entrepreneurship and
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provides an overarching framework to encompass the different pieces making up universityentrepreneurship (e.g. technology transfer, university licensing, science parks, incubators, universityspin-offs, TTOs [technology Transfer Offices], etc.).
(Rothaermel, Agung and Jiang 2007, 700)
Speaking more broadly about university–industry collaborations in the form of research centres,Boardman and Corley (2008) argues that there are few comprehensive definitions of the term:‘There are few clear-cut definitions of exactly what constitutes a research center; accordingly, inpast research many different types or extra-departmental “organized research units”. . . have beencharacterized using the “centers” label’ (Boardman and Corley 2008, 900). It is here importantto distinguish between ‘the entrepreneurial university’ as a more broad-ranging shift in focus onwhat role the university is supposed to play in contemporary knowledge economy, and ‘researchcentres’ as a specific form of organisation used within the entrepreneurial university. Youtie,Libaers and Bozeman (2006) are here emphasising the difference between the more conventionaluniversity research centre (URC) and today’s multidiscipline, multipurpose university researchcentre (MMURC). While the URCs have been a rather widespread form of industry–universitycollaboration, the MMURC is less common and is demanding additional skills in leadership, man-agement and the capacity to collaborate in transdisciplinary settings. The MMURC is thereforeone of the principal vehicles for the entrepreneurial university.
Notwithstanding what form the industry–university collaborations employ, many commentatorspoint out that in order to create a truly entrepreneurial university, capable of hosting a number ofresearch centres or other forms of university–industry collaboration, there is a need for overcomingidiosyncratic cultural and institutional barriers between industry and university (Boardman andPonomariov 2007). Lam (2007, 997) suggests that ‘industry–university collaborations have longbeen shown to be problematic because of the difficulties in reconciling the divergent work normsand reward structures governing the two different knowledge production systems’. Addressingthe same concern, Siegel, Wright and Lockett (2007, 497) say that ‘there is an inherent conflictof interest between the traditional academic reward system, which is focused on peer reviewedpublication of basic research, and the technology transfer reward system, which is focused onrevenue generation from applied research’. However, what Lam (2007) calls ‘entrepreneurial pro-fessors’ may play an active role in mediating the two different domains of interests and practice.Entrepreneurial professors are capable of linking what Gibbons et al. (1994) calls Mode 1 andMode 2 research, that is traditional research and research that has the explicit objective to producepractically useful knowledge, respectively (Harvey, Pettigrew and Ferlie 2002; MacLean, Mac-Intosh and Grant 2002). Lam (2007) therefore target the entrepreneurial professors as a centralposition in the emerging regime of research:
Both cognitively and organizationally, these entrepreneurial professors play a critical role in bridgingthe interface between science and business. They contribute not only their deep scientific expertiseto industrial projects, but more critically, their brokering role enables the firms to embed themselveswithin the wider scientific networks, including their local laboratory networks of researchers anddoctoral students. (Lam 2007, 1007)
As Murray (2002) found in his research on industry–university collaborations, the overlap betweenthe two networks – the industry network and the university network – is ‘complex, multi-facetedand active’ and collaboration are likely to arise through ‘a rich set of mechanisms’ (Murray2002, 1401). In summary, the entrepreneurial university and the entrepreneurial professors are‘images’ of a future university that is very much in the making, in a process of becoming.
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Still there is evidence of a broad range of activities that actively bridge university and industry.The entrepreneurial university is therefore both a role model and what is actively being producedfor the time being. Engaging in the day-to-day work that is emerging in the intersecting domain ofuniversity and industry is therefore the best way to understand what barriers and impediments thatresearchers and industry representatives are equally experiencing in their everyday work. Ratherthan assuming that the entrepreneurial university is a strict binary concept, there are degrees of‘academic entrepreneurship’ and at every single instant there are both centripetal and centrifugalforces, forces of unity and disaggregation that affect the individual researcher. The entrepreneurialuniversity is therefore what emerges in between these two opposing movements.
On methodology
The study is based on a case study methodology including a variety of data collection methodssuch as interviews with research centre representatives and participative observations. The case is amajor Scandinavian technical university (subsequently referred to with the pseudonym UniTech),located in one of the largest cities in Scandinavia and ranked among the 300 best universitiesin the world according to the annual Times Higher Education Supplement evaluation. UniTechis a research university with a series of departments in the engineering sciences and the nat-ural sciences, including chemistry, physics, mechanical engineering, electric engineering, civilengineering and architecture. In addition, UniTech hosts a technology management school andhas over the years developed a strong environment and sustainable development research profileincluding a series of research chairs in related disciplines. Being a technical university, UniTechhas traditionally developed strong tiers with industry in both the region and at the national level.Over the years, the Swedish higher education policy and the funding bodies have emphasised thepractical orientation of the basic and applied research in Swedish universities. As part of this newpolicy, universities are expected to develop even closer collaborative relationships with industry,preferably in the form of jointly financed research centres. UniTech has been fairly successful inattracting this sort of national research funding. At the time of this study, some 40 research centreswere hosted by UniTech, demonstrating a significant heterogeneity in terms of funding, researchorientation, scientific bases and collaborations with industry and governmental agencies andorganisations. Most of the research centres are part of major state-funded research programmesand are in many cases transdisciplinary in orientation, addressing social problems demandingcollaboration over departmental boundaries, for instance, sustainable development issues or spe-cific technological applications in mobile communication. Some of the characteristics of the 10research centres are summarised in Table 1.
However, in some cases industry initiated the research centres, hoping to create fruitful relationswith the university. Moreover, while some research centres were started in the mid 1990s, othersare newly started or are in a start-up phase. The research centres are also organisationally locatedunder either specific departments or as being part of the Rector’s Office organisation. Finally,the research centres at UniTech display a variety of arrangements pertaining to funding. In mostcases, the state, industry and UniTech jointly financed the research centres. The UniTech rectorand management team, constituted by five vice rectors and some additional support staff includ-ing a fundraising agency, did not think they had a full overview of the ongoing activities. Tworesearchers were enrolled in a study of research centres, aiming at identifying some of the genericmechanisms and processes in all the centres. In the study, 10 centres were selected on basis of theirability to represent the underlying UniTech research profile and competence. In the 10 centres,an average of three representatives were interviewed, including centre directors and participating
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Table 1. Characteristics of the 10 UniTech research centres
Research Scientific disciplines Collaboratingcentres Objectives involved companies Financing
Research foundations,membership fees,UniTech Rector’sOffice
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researchers at senior, post-doc and doctoral student level. The interviewees held at least post-docpositions and many of the interviewees were full professors. Most of the interviewees had sig-nificant experience from working at the university but some of the interviewees, primarily centredirectors, had extensive experience from industry. Each interview lasted for about one hour andwas tape-recorded and transcribed by either of the two researchers. Interviews were structured inaccordance with an interview guide. The interviews focused on the day-to-day research work inthe research centres, their connection to the industry partners and other relevant research milieusinside and outside of UniTech, the relationship between academic and industry objectives andreward systems, the funding and leadership and control of the research centres, the day-to-daywork in the research centres and other issues pertaining to the research work from the view of theresearchers. In general, the interviews were largely focused on the actual activities and day-to-daypractices in the research milieu, for instance: what were the joint meetings and seminars whereboth industry representatives and UniTech representatives participated? Regarding leadership ofthe research centres, the research centres’ directors were asked how they managed the day-to-dayoperations and what activities they participated in and how much time they spent coordinating therelationship between practitioners and faculty. Another issue of discussion was the relationshipsbetween the research centres and the hosting department and with the UniTech management.In addition, to interviewing, the two researcher used various printed materials and formal evalu-ations (when available) provided by the research centres. Moreover, on three occasions, the tworesearchers met with the vice rector team and participated in a joint discussion about the purposeand content of the study. During these meetings, the vice rectors, all being in charge of differentdomains of UniTech research portfolio addressed individual concerns and interests. The man-agement, support and control of the research centres were apparently a multifaceted managerialassignment possible to articulate in a number of alternative ways.
In the interviews, a majority of the interviewees were men, but some women, in many casesin post-doc positions, were interviewed. However, this skewed gender-profile of the study isrepresentative of a general overrepresentation of men in technical universities such as UniTech ingeneral, and more specifically at senior levels (associate professors and professors). Most of theinterviewees were born in Sweden but some interviewees were born in other European countries.Most of the interviewees had pursued academic careers but in some cases they were recruitedfrom industry.
Becoming an entrepreneurial university
To repeat, the Bakhtinian analytical model suggests that language is always composed of andshaped by two opposing forces, one unifying (the centripetal force) and one dividing (the cen-trifugal force) language. In analogy with Bakhtin’s model, the role of the entrepreneurial professor– a term that we reserve for any academic researcher involved in university–industry collabora-tions with the intention of producing knowledge that is both theoretically appealing and practicallyuseful – is always affected by centripetal and centrifugal forces that he or she is exposed to. Theentrepreneurial university is therefore an academic institution capable of effectively balancingthese two forces.
Centripetal forces
In the study of the 10 research centres, virtually all interviewees were positive about the experienceof participating in the joint research work. For instance, one of the professors working in a
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research centre studying mobile communication was very positive about the experience: ‘I wouldsay that the two centres have meant incredibly much for the department. It’s very positive!’(Interviewee No. 2). Many of the interviewees emphasised that the research centres enabled newopportunities and that they were opening up for new collaborations between academic researchersand industry representatives. ‘The research centres have the advantage of being a compact bodyof research results; all the way from basic research to applications. You can point at that chain,you can point at the applications’, one of the interviewees, an associate professor claimed. ‘Thechain research–application–innovation–commercialisation is important to further strengthen andmaintain. This Alpha [a UniTech research centre] can do in a good manner’ another intervieweeclaimed (Interviewee No. 10). Some of the interviewees regarded the research centres as part ofan inevitable movement toward more applied research and more complex collaborations: ‘Thetendency is towards larger and more complex projects or programmes and those having thecompetence to coordinate such activities are the winners’(Interviewee No. 11). One of the researchcentre directors addressed the same topic:
Today, we are expected to make money out of the research in a better way. That will impose newdemands. We need to be capable of handling this situation . . . to be capable of combining academicwork with more extrovert and more commercial activities . . .. What we want is high internationalquality in what we are doing but it has to be relevant. (Interviewee No. 10).
In many cases, the research centres had enacted ‘business creation’ as one of their objectives,that is, to advance and support new business opportunities, either in the form of actual productinnovations or in the form of new companies. One of the research centre directors claimed thattheir role was to produce new businesses on the basis of ‘basic research’ and collaboration withindustry: ‘Here at the university, we do most of the theoretical work and then the companies buildmodels and do the testing’. The shared sense of meaning and purpose in the research centresserved as an esprit de corps that integrated the research centres and imposed a shared ideologythat provided further direction for the day-to-day work.
This overall enthusiasm over the collaborative work did however not mean that there was noneed for carefully managing the activities. One of the most critical processes to handle whensetting up the research centre was leadership matters. Several of the research centre leaderspointed out their central role in ‘making things work’. However, just as in the health care sectorand among medical doctors, university researchers tended to not regard a management positionas a positive career move. One of the research centre directors pointed out this as a weakness forthe university system:
To become boss, prefect or head of division, that is nothing people caring about research are strivingfor but they tend to think of it as a burden and you’re expected to endure for a few years. Then thereis no long-term agreement on how to develop the organization. At times, employing professionalmanagers on certain positions would be a good thing, [and then] you get a leader that wants to be theboss and takes responsibility and supports the researchers. (Interviewee No. 3)
Another interviewee emphasised the need for ‘professional management’: ‘It is important tooffer professional management. It is complicated for individual researchers to claim that “I canconduct the research and take care of and lead the project”’ (Interviewee No. 10). However,while the leadership of the research centres was one issue to handle, the relationship betweenthe individual research centre and the rector’s office was another matter to take into account.
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Among the research centre directors, there was a certain degree of ambiguity regarding therelationship between the research centre and the rector and the vice rectors.
It is all about making the day-to-day work run as smooth as possible. People in the UniTech topmanagement team have preciously little time and they spend a few moments working on something,then they leave, and then they return. (Interviewee No. 3)
In addition, the research centres’ directors and other researchers had a problem to define whatlevel of control and monitoring they thought was the most helpful and meaningful. Many of theinterviewees balanced between a laissez-faire leadership style and a more active engagement withthe research centres on part of the rector’s office, that is to ‘not get too involved in the day-to-daywork while at the same time monitoring the progress’ as one of the interviewees put it. However,at the same time as the research centres claimed their at least partial autonomy from the rector’sdecisions, there was still an acute sensitivity towards signals from the rector’s office. Any weaksignal of a change in policy was likely to produce reasonably strong reactions in the researchcentres. For instance, one of the interviewees emphasised the problem of sorting out differentmessages from the rector and the vice-rectors:
The new rector leadership team has put the research centres into question – that is what they investigateright now. We get different signals . . . and the vice-rectors may not share the same views. They alsorefer to one another and then things get fuzzy.We hope to get a more integrated view there. (IntervieweeNo. 11)
Speaking in terms of centripetal and centrifugal forces, qualified leadership practices on boththe level of the research centres and the university management served to integrate and unify theentrepreneurial domains of research. Therefore, both the sense of purpose and direction and aclear leadership structure served to constitute an ‘entrepreneurial ideology’ that helped mediatingthe differences between academic traditions and industry demands and expectations. Withoutsuch entrepreneurial ideologies, research centre co-workers would have been exposed to moreambiguities and uncertainties that in the long run would have threatened the unity and integrationof the research centres. However, as will be addressed shortly, there were a number of mechanismsand practices that, contrary to the centripetal forces, may disintegrate the entrepreneurial ideologydeveloped and nourished in the research centres. They are the centrifugal forces that continuallyunderline the differences in tradition between the university and industry.
Centrifugal forces
One of the most significant differences between the university and industry is the time perspectiveof these two social systems. In the university, preoccupied with producing results sub speciesaeternis, for the benefit of mankind in a non-defined time perspective, industry is today in mostcases operating under the influence of financial markets and is therefore adhering to the quar-ter economy principles of delivering results that satisfy financial analysts. That is, universityresearchers are working in a long-term perspective while industry representatives are concernedabout transforming theoretical knowledge into commodities or process innovations as soon aspossible. However, in the research centres that have been running for some time, there was ageneral experience that industry had learned over time that the production of useful knowledgedoes not benefit from a too short-sighted perspective. For instance, one of the professors argued:
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In the beginning, I was quite skeptical . . . because I am not a person interested in merely ‘serving’industry . . .. I was a bit concerned industry would demand a certain type of publication and ask fora more short-sighted thinking . . .. If there was any kind of development, it has been a positive one.(Interviewee No. 6)
As part of the collaboration, university researchers had to negotiate and discuss the time perspectivethat was needed to produce useful knowledge. The professor continued to point out that there areopportunities for reaching an agreement regarding output:
[There is] a genuine long-term industry interest and the industry representatives also know that researchis about long-term development. I think they have learned, if nothing else, to appreciate the long-termperspective. It is not a quarter economy . . .. I think that’s very positive. Not all industries work likethat. Sure, they want popular reports and results and you have to recognize that, but they accept thisthing with publications that we researchers appreciate. (Interviewee No. 6)
Another source of divergent interest may concern what kind of research should be delivered.While all interviewees agreed that research centres should produce practically useful knowledge,the means prescribed for accomplishing this goal differed. For instance, one of the assistantprofessors thought of his research centres as oriented towards being ‘too practical’: ‘The centresare evaluated on the basis of the collaboration with industry and what industry can develop outof the centres. That is the main thing. Research itself may be a bit under-rated . . .. I think it is toolittle valued. We are a university: There should be research’ (assistant professor). He continued:‘I think you shouldn’t take it so far that you sacrifice all research for it [innovations and products].If research leads to products, that’s fine, but you do not want only development’.Another professorwas concerned that today more and more research is conducted in the form of joint researchcentres and that renewal and change in perspective were not very likely to derive from suchlarge-scale university–industry collaborations but from small, innovative and individual projectson the margins of a specific field of research: ‘I am bit worried the smaller initiatives are on theway out. I think these [research centres] are really good, but they cannot be everything’, he said.Paradoxically, there is a risk he suggested that the will and ambition to contribute with practicalknowledge in the university–industry collaborations might in fact hinder new and innovative ideasto emerge when all available resources are invested in large-scale, high profile projects.
Another concern for the research projects was to balance the universality–particularity dimen-sions of research. While universities are serving to provide society with knowledge that is intendedto be ‘universal’, much actual research is in fact grappling with rather specific and even idiosyn-cratic problems. When the university is collaborating with a consortium of firms, in many casesof various size and financial possibilities, there is an inherent concern regarding how to takeadvantage of the benefit from the knowledge produced. Many of the interlocutors claimed theywere very concerned about how to balance the portfolio of participating firms and that all firmsshould get an equal share of the output. Many interviewees argued that they had learned the hardway how to balance the interests of the various stakeholders. For instance, one of the professorshad experience of working in a joint research project where two competitors were participating.The company representatives were carefully watching one another and a significant amount oftime and effort had to be spent on sorting out mutual rights and obligations. The whole situationwas ‘very complicated’ the professor thought and he learned that this kind of situation had to beavoided in the future, if possible. Another researcher addressed the same topic, arguing that find-ing an adequate amount of participating companies was of great importance for the forthcomingjoint work:
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The strength with this kind of centre is that if many companies are collaborating then they need toaccept generic results in a manner quite different from a case when> than if only a few companiesparticipate. If there are only a few companies, then they are watching one another all the time.(associate professor)
Another issue that was causing great concern was how to evaluate the importance of the researchcentres. While all the interviewees claimed the research centres were a good way to organiseresearch activities, they did at the same time have significant difficulties in defining how toevaluate their impact and role. First, many of the interviewees thought that evaluating the workon the basis of the number of patents as a blunt measurement because they thought they wereconducting ‘upstream research’prior to any patent applications. For instance, in the case of railwaytransportation technology, patents were complicated and costly to get and one applied for patentsprimarily as a ‘form of marketing’, one of the professors claimed. Second, the number of academicpublications provided was also regarded as being inadequate because many of the research effortswere in the domain of ‘applied research’ and therefore less likely to be cited in comparison tomore theoretical research. Third, ‘economic value’ or ‘economic impact’ were also claimed to becomplicated to measure in a short-term perspective. In addition, another complication is that anyproper evaluation, one of the professors argued, would have to take into account aspects of ‘whatif the centre did not exist’ in the analysis. The professor argued:
Among the most complicated issues when doing this kind of evaluation, that is ‘what is business asusual?’Yet, the evaluators need to estimate what role the research centre has played in terms of raisinglarger funding. Evaluators need to both calculate the money and the importance of the projects andevaluate what might have happened if the research centres didn’t exist. (Interviewee No. 10)
Such ‘contra-factual’ evaluations are of necessity speculative but nevertheless highlight someimportant aspects of the research centre. Therefore, rather than identifying a few parameters toevaluate, the interviewees thought that the best way to address the value of the centre was tolet external researchers review the research centre work in its entirety. A number of such moreintegrative reviews had been conducted and they were in general positive about the contributionof the research centres.
In summary, the research centres were subject to the influence of a variety of centrifugal forces,traditions, cultural traits, practices, objectives and so forth, that complicated the integration andunity of the research centre as a domain of entrepreneurial activities in the intersection betweenuniversity and industry. While centripetal forces unify and integrate the research centres throughimposing shared objectives, ideologies and objectives, centrifugal forces operate in the oppositedirection, that is, to underline and strengthen the particular interests and idiosyncratic concernsco-existing in any social system. Like any social system, the centripetal and centrifugal forcesare in every instant serving as a field of forces that may or may not be in equilibrium. Whenthe centripetal forces predominate in a research centre, unity and a sense of shared objectiveshelp produce useful knowledge. At the same time, the individual interests of either universityand industry representatives may be side-lined or abandoned, leading to less new and creativethinking essentially emerging from the encounter between theoretical interests and the demand foruseful knowledge. On the contrary, when centrifugal forces predominate, a larger scope of ideasco-exists in time but little actual collaboration between different actors may be accomplished.Therefore, during various periods, centripetal and centrifugal forces may dominate, but in a long-term perspective, they need to be carefully balanced. Striking this balance between the centripetal
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and centrifugal forces is therefore what is of central importance for the emerging entrepreneurialuniversity. Some of the principal challenges regarding the balancing of centripetal and centrifugalforces in the 10 research centres are summarised in Table 2.
Discussion
The academic training (e.g. PhD programmes) the neophyte has to undergo to become a scientistconstitutes a strong tertiary socialisation, imposing ideologies, ethics, norms and values uponthe individual researcher. ‘The mastery of scientific practices is inevitably linked to self-mastery,the assiduous cultivation of a certain kind of self’, Daston and Galison (2007, 40) remark. Whenacademic researchers with little formal training with or experience of collaborations with industryare expected to act as entrepreneurial professors, there are therefore significant hurdles that needto be overcome. Similarly, when industry representatives with limited insight into the academicprocedures for knowledge production encounter the esoteric domain of the academy, there may bea great deal of concern or even frustration on part of the practically-minded participant. In order tomediate or ‘de-paradoxify’ (Luhmann 1995) such co-existing and opposing objectives in researchcentres, there is a need for a variety of mechanisms and practices that may keep the centripetaland the centrifugal forces in equilibrium. In cases where the centripetal force predominates, thereis little collaboration between academic researchers and industry representatives, while in caseswhere the centrifugal forces play a more dominating role, there is a gradual loss of the academicprocedures for systematic knowledge production and academic researchers becomes ‘doers’ inthe service of short-sighted industry interests. The Bakhtinian model of centripetal/centrifugalforces is helpful because it recognises what from the outside may appear as contradictory andinconsistent in more affirmative terms. Language, for instance, is in Bakhtin’s understandingof what is never wholly integrated and unified, in a state of harmony and thus a source foruncomplicated communication. On the contrary, language is always heteroglot, filled with riftsand voids, inconsistencies and ruptures; it is dialogic and plural, inherently filled with conflictsand contrasts.Yet language is at the bottom line capable of conveying meaning, to serve as a shareddomain for communication and interaction despite all these inherent inconsistencies. For Bakhtin,no author has captured these paradoxical features of language better than Feodor Dostoevsky, thegreat Russian novelist. In Dostoevsky’s prose, the utterances of his dramatis personae are alwaysshaped by the heteroglossia of language.
Transferring the concept of centripetal and centrifugal forces to a new domain of investigation, inour case the collaborative efforts between industry and academy, enables a fruitful theoretisation ofthe balancing of, on the one hand, integrative mechanisms producing a sense of unity and coherenceand the explorative mechanisms opening up for new ways of thinking, in many cases in terms ofhow to translate formal theoretical knowledge into new innovations, products and services. In theactual case of the 10 research centres at UniTech there was an emphasis on the need for balancingthe two forces in the day-to-day work. On the one hand, the university should be able to producesystematic and scientifically verified knowledge; on the other hand, such knowledge has greatpotential in terms of being translated into marketable commodities or new practices supportinginnovations when collaborating with industry. In other words, academic researchers working inthe emerging regime of the entrepreneurial university are inhabiting a world wherein they have tolearn to balance and negotiate opposing or even conflicting objectives. As has been emphasisedby numerous commentators, the entrepreneurial university does not come for free but only aftersome of the more dogmatic perceptions on what role universities should play in the knowledgesociety has been critically examined and debated. ‘Entrepreneurial professors’are therefore skilful
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Table 2. Centrifugal and centripetal forces at the UniTech research centres
Research Major centrifugal Major centripetalcentres forces forces Assessment
Alpha Political objectives andinternational collaborationsbetween leading universities
The willingness to contributewith theories regardingsustainable developmentin technology, socialpractice, and policy
Risk of too little emphasison centripetal forces(theoretical contributions)when political agendasdominate activities
Beta A strong orientation towardslistening to the industrystakeholders’ practicalconcerns and interests
The willingness andinterest in collaboratingtransdisciplinary betweendepartmental andparadigmatic boundaries
Good balance betweenpractical and theoreticalobjectives
Gamma A too diverse set of practi-cal issues and concernsthat is poorly inte-grated theoretically andmethodologically
A coherent analyticaland methodologicalframework in thediscipline
Good balance betweenpractical and theoreticalobjectives
Delta Mismatch between industryinterests and what istheoretically challenging andon the international researchagenda
An integrated theoreticaland methodologicalframework in the domainof expertise
Risk of too little theoreticalcontribution if practicalconcerns dominate theresearch agenda
Epsilon Complicated to align industrystakeholder interests andcreate a shared framework
A concentration of leadingexpertise in the field
Risk of too little theoreticalcontribution if practicalconcerns dominate theresearch agenda
Zeta An all-too-vague or broad-ranging assignment fromthe key stakeholdersundermining a shared senseof objectives
A strong commitment tosustainable developmenttheories and policy
Risk of too little emphasison centripetal forces(theoretical contributions)when political agendasdominate activities
Eta The ability to align and bringinto harmony the interestsof various stakeholders,including academicresearchers in the field ofchemistry and theoreticalphysics
A shared commitmentover disciplinary anddepartmental boundariesto catalyst technologies
Good balance betweenpractical and theoreticalobjectives
Theta A broad set of interests andresearch agendas spreadingthe research efforts too thin
A shared interest inthe possibilities forshipping and intermodaltransportation systems
Risk of too little theoreticalcontributions as a numberof actors and projects arecoordinated
Iota The assignment form keystakeholders is too broad tointegrate the activities
A coherent theoreticaland methodologicalframework in themathematical sciences
Risk of too little practicalvalue added (centrifugalforces) when primarilytheoretical issues areaddressed
Kappa Competition between basic andapplied research and on whatlevel the analysis shouldbe, i.e. on component level,technical systems level orsocial systems level
A strong commitment to theareas of interests and astrong local tradition inthe field
Risk of too little theoreticalcontributions as a numberof actors and projects arecoordinated
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researchers that are capable of collaborating with industry without compromising their positionas producers of systematic knowledge. When attempting to formule a more normative conclusionor a verdict on whether UniTech has been successful or not regarding its ambition to nourishentrepreneurial spirit, one may argue that the university has been quite successful in settingup such collaborative arenas where entrepreneurial activities are jointly developed by industryrepresentatives and faculty. However, the concept of the entrepreneurial university is a dynamicconcept, never fully in equilibrium but always in the process of striking a balance between thecentrifugal and centripetal forces, and therefore there is no fixed Archimedian point where thesetwo forces are once and for all in balance. During periods, significant effort may be dedicated tothe theoretical concerns in a research centre while during other periods, there may be a strongerfocus on bringing innovative ideas to the market. Under all circumstances, UniTech has beensuccessful in terms of actively promoting and supporting such university–industry collaborationsbut there are still significant lessons to be learned on how to simultaneously serve academic andindustry interests, both at UniTech and other universities.
Conclusion
The recent interest in the entrepreneurial university and the formulation of a variety of conceptsderived within this discourse emphasising closer collaboration between industry and academiatestify to a generic concern for what role the university is supposed to play in contemporarysociety. Since university research is strongly institutionalised and established as a professionalpractice demanding credentials from a variety of organisations, there are significant hurdles toovercome when opening up to more collaborative efforts between industry and the academy. Thispaper has reported a case study including 10 industry–university research centre collaborationsand emphasises that rather than thinking of such collaborations in binary terms (e.g. ‘good’/‘bad’,‘successful’/‘unsuccessful’), such collaborative efforts are always in a state of flux, in a state ofmaintaining what has been called the centripetal and centrifugal forces in equilibrium. Industry–university collaborations are never wholly ‘theoretical’ or wholly ‘practical’ but always containboth theoretical and practical interests and concerns, and therefore there is a need to understandsuch collaborative work on the basis of analytical models that is affirmative towards this dualism.The study shows that industry–university collaborations are continuously subject to modificationsand negotiations in order to satisfy a variety of interests. The three research centres Beta, Deltaand Eta had managed to strike a balance between practical interests and theoretical contributions.This is not to suggest that the seven other research centres were less successful in both providingindustry with practically valuable research and publishing state-of-the-art research. It suggests thatresearchers representing these research centres expressed their concern that it was complicatedto balance the two objectives for the time being. This lack of balance between centrifugal andcentripetal forces could be explained by a variety of conditions. The research centre could bein an early phase where attention had to be paid to specific practical issues to get the researchcentre ‘up and running’ or a specific researcher could be involved in a research project with asalient practical objective. Moreover, individual research projects undergo phases where eitherpractical work or theoretical reflections are dominating. Seen over time, the challenge for researchcentres is to balance these two objectives in order to accomplish both goals. While Gamma andEta were well-institutionalised research projects, having some years of experience and had beenpositively evaluated by an external peer-review commissioned by the financiers, Beta was ratherrecently initiated. However, the researchers at Beta were very positive regarding the potential forcontributing with practically and theoretically valuable insights and they did not see any conflict
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between practical and theoretical interests. What other research centres may learn from Beta,Gamma and Eta is that one should pay attention to how to balance centrifigal and centripetalforces over time, that is, the research does not need to make worthwhile contributions to bothpractice and theory in every instance but in order to become a viable and dynamic research centre,potentially fulfilling all the demands, there is a need to allow for cycles of practical engagementand theoretical reflection. Seen in this view, the entrepreneurial university is not a radical newform of university, a form of venture representing a rupture with the past, but is instead verymuch a matter of maintaining ‘old’ academic virtues while simultaneously contributing to morepractical interests. The entrepreneurial university does therefore not represent a ‘brave new world’but rather the old, familiar world but under the influence of new objectives and new social demandsand new social problems to be handled.
Acknowledgements
The authors would like to thank Staffan Jacobsson andAnna Dubois and the anonymous reviewers for insightful commentson both this specific work and this domain of interest more broadly.
Notes on contributors
Alexander Styhre, PhD, is professor and chair of organisation theory and management, at School of Business, Economicsand Law, University of Gothenburg, Sweden. Alexander’s research work is centred on knowledge-intensive and creativework. He has published widely in the field of organisation theory and his work appears in journals such as HumanRelations, Organisation Studies and Journal of Management Studies. He is author of number of textbooks and researchmonographs. His latest, Visual Culture in Organisations, was published by Routledge in 2010.
Frida Lind is anAssistant Professor at the Department of Technology Management and Economics at Chalmers Universityof Technology, Sweden. She received her PhD from this department in 2006. Her main research interest regards organisingin networks, and includes boundary spanning research centres, inter-organisational projects and start-up companies andtheir initial customers.
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