Abstract
At a time when the most important inputs for advanced economies are knowledge and creativity, we entrust universities with some of the most pressing missions that a society concerned with its future can have. (p. 45)
In this beautifully crafted book, Owen-Smith explores the critical and central role that research universities play in the modern economy. Using a diverse set of theoretical lenses ranging from network theory from sociology to economic geography, he examines the tremendous long-term social and economic impact of research universities and the particular societal, local, and organizational characteristics that produce such impact. Owen-Smith discusses research universities’ roles as knowledge hubs, community anchors, and sources of discovery, arguing that because these roles are coupled with a public service mission, the modern research university provides a flexible adaptive system for engaging the unknown future and unforeseen challenges, thus assuring our society’s long-term survival. The book contains numerous powerful anecdotes to illustrate its key points, such as the origin of touchscreen technology and the scientific communities’ response to new diseases such as Zika. This book should be of great interest to both policy makers and academic researchers interested in understanding the research university’s role in modern innovation ecosystems and in our economy and society more broadly.
At the local level, Owen-Smith examines how universities contribute as community anchors. Universities not only provide the stability that local communities need to sustain themselves but also create the new knowledge and entrepreneurial organizations that invigorate them. On the one hand, universities fulfill communities’ current needs by housing archives of historic knowledge and providing training to the local workforce, particularly the knowledge workers who sustain local industries. On the other hand, universities support scientific teams that work on creating new knowledge with the potential to disrupt the technology landscape of current industries. Universities are incubators for new knowledge and new ventures, which create and support new forms of value that drive local economic growth. Sixty-nine percent of the new ventures that originate in universities to commercialize university technologies stay in the universities’ local communities.
Owen-Smith also examines how universities are hubs of disparate types of knowledge that provide the right environment for discovery and innovation. Scientific discovery can be serendipitous—it often comes from the most unexpected mix of ideas and people. Research universities construct networks of researchers and knowledge workers across time, place, and disciplinary boundaries, creating the context in which serendipitous scientific discoveries can occur. This is illustrated by the story of the page rank technology underlying Google’s search engine. The patent on which this technology is based cites 16 papers written by 27 authors affiliated with 19 different organizations. The core technology came from a mix of disciplines ranging from mathematical sociology to library science. Sergio Brin, a Google co-founder, was a post doc at Stanford working on a National Science Foundation grant supporting research in library science at the time of Google’s founding.
Owen-Smith characterizes universities as a set of capabilities found nowhere else in society that allows us to collectively identify and respond to problems that have not yet manifested themselves. Such capabilities are vital for our society, as the COVID-19 pandemic illustrates. Universities were an invaluable resource during the 2016 Zika virus outbreak that affected over 40,000 people in more than 50 countries. Within four months of the World Health Organization declaring Zika a “Public Health Emergency of International Concern,” university research teams identified key proteins that enabled the virus to reproduce. These research teams were able to respond to the outbreak of an unknown disease and produce the knowledge needed to treat patients within a very short time.
This book focuses on U.S. universities. An important omission of the analysis is research universities in emerging economies and the similarities and differences between them and U.S.-based research universities. The university systems in emerging economies provide an excellent opportunity for future work to explore whether the mechanisms identified in this book generalize outside of the U.S. context.
Research universities in some emerging economies are structurally different than U.S. universities. For example, unlike the decentralized university system in the U.S., China has a centralized system in which research universities are regulated tightly by the central Ministry of Education and funded almost entirely by the government. Because of their reliance on national funding and their close connection with the national and provincial governments and the communist party, Chinese research universities are particularly responsive to the nation’s needs. For instance, a Chinese university research team discovered the full sequence of the 2019 novel coronavirus within one month of its first appearance, thanks to their privileged access to a patient sample provided by the national government (Wu et al., 2020). Chinese research universities’ ability to contribute to national priorities is also demonstrated by their active involvement in commercializing cutting-edge technologies such as artificial intelligence (AI). In 2017, 48 percent of global funding in AI went to Chinese AI start-ups (CBInsights, 2019), many of which were university spin-offs. And according to World Intellectual Property Organization’s Technology Trend 2019 report, three out of the four universities/research institutes that had the largest AI-related patent portfolio until that year were from China (WIPO, 2019). While a more centralized university system may lead to quicker alignment with national interests, it may also reduce the number of serendipitous discoveries. We know very little about how differences in research university models in China and other emerging economies may lead to a qualitatively different impact on the broader economy and society. More comparative institutional studies are needed to answer this question. This book provides an excellent framework for future comparative work on the different institutional roles that research universities play in U.S. versus non-U.S. contexts.
Owen-Smith helps us see the tremendous contributions that research universities make to the public interest. Moreover, this book shows the difficult balance that research universities manage between being caretakers of legacy knowledge that serves industry needs today and creating the new knowledge and entrepreneurs to drive progress tomorrow. Reading this book made us feel extremely grateful to be a part of this amazing and complex institution, the research university. We hope that faculty, university administrators, and architects of public policy will learn from and enjoy this book as well.