Public Universities and Regional Growth: Insights from the University of California ed. by Martin Kenney & David C. Mowery (review)

This volume, edited by two distinguished scholars, Martin Kenney from UC Davis and David C. Mowery from UC Berkeley, studies the symbiotic relationships of a leading public university, the University of California, with regional firms in a wide variety of fields, highlighting the cooperative nature of research and innovation in academia and industry.

In the first chapter, which serves as an introduction to the volume, Kenney and Mowery discuss the Bayh-Dole Act of 1980, whose goal was to promote patenting and licensing of research discoveries by universities. Although the Act was influential, Kenney and Mowery believe that the subsequent increase in patenting and licensing activities might have happened without it, since technology transfer is central to the knowledge-based economy. In addition, they note that the Act’s focus on patenting and licensing overlooks the interactive nature of technology transfer between universities and industry. Knowledge, people, and resources flow from industry to universities, as well as in the other direction. Patenting and licensing are less important to this exchange than publications, conferences, and other formal and informal contacts, including consulting. Accordingly, in this book, Kenney, Mowery and a team of well-known experts analyze a series of complex and multifaceted university-industry interactions at six campuses of the University of California.

The State of California has been particularly active in technology transfer. As Kenney and Mowery point out, during the first twelve years of the 21 ^stCentury, 45.6% of all nationwide venture capital was invested in California firms. It is probably not a coincidence that California has ten of the top fifty universities in the world, including most campuses of the University of California. In spite of its centralized system, the University of California has had enough flexibility to allow each campus to respond to local conditions and to do so in its own way. This book reviews some key examples of this phenomenon. Although the authors caution that the cases discussed in the volume are not necessarily representative of the many types of university-industry collaborations that exist, I believe that in fact they comprise an excellent sampler.

Chapter Two, by Christophe Lécuyer, analyzes semiconductor innovation at UC Berkeley, UCLA, and UC Santa Barbara, campuses that benefited from their proximity to firms such as Intel, which provided ideas, technologies, experts, and funds for their research. The main contributions of the campuses were the training of first-rate engineers, the development of experimental technologies, and their conversion into commercial products. These campuses were not particularly focused on patenting and licensing. Instead, they favored an open-science approach.

The following essay, by Steven Casper, reviews the evolution of the biotechnology industry in the San Francisco and San Diego regions, where two of the three largest biotechnology clusters in the world are located, the third being Boston. The San Francisco cluster, dominated by Genentech, produced more publications than the San Diego cluster, exemplified by Hybritech. Although the San Diego area did not have as strong an inventor network as the San Francisco area, it did have a robust entrepreneurial environment. The San Francisco firms favored an open science approach in their interactions with UC San Francisco, while the San Diego companies followed a proprietary science arrangement in their dealings with UC San Diego. Both clusters were very productive, showing that there are different models for success in technology transfer.

Chapter Four, by Martin Kenney, David C. Mowery, and Donald Patton, examines the history of UC Berkeley’s Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science and its interactions with regional industries by focusing on several case studies. These highlight the ways in which academia and industry exchange expertise, including employment of students, postgraduate education for working professionals, faculty recruitment...