Studies On American Government-Industry-University Collaborative Research Organizations

The eighteenth National Congress of the CPC present the new concept on innovation strategy, which emphasize collaborative innovation to build a strong national innovation system by taking the enterprises as the main part of research alliance with market-oriented and integration of enterprises and university. In2012, A "University Innovation Ability Promotion Plan"(also known as the "2011plan") had been jointly issued by the Ministry of Education and the Ministry of Finance to build "the2011Collaborative Innovation Center". After that many scholars started to research the industry-university cooperation alliance with the expectation to explore the organization and operation policies of those centers. In essence, Collaborative innovation is the deepened cooperation of government-industry-university (GIU). Industry-University Cooperative Research Center (I/UCRC) and Engineering Research Center (ERC) founded in1980s with the support of NSF of USA. For they are similar with the2011Collaborative Innovation Center, it is a suitable cases to study and get the reflections on the development of the centers in China.To react to the establishment of the2011Collaborative Innovation Center, the thesis try to find some reflections and best practices by analyzing the management, operations polices and government-industry-university (GIU)relations of Industry-University Cooperative Research Center (I/UCRC) and Engineering Research Center (ERC). As Government-industry-university collaborative research centers actually are the organization of cooperation among government, industry and university, it is necessary to analyze the coordination polices and mechanism. This paper take the management and mechanism of I/UCRC and ERC as the analyzing framework by studying literature and basic research materials from the view of international comparison. Several questions need to be answered by research as follows:What is government-industry-university collaborative research centers in the background of the national innovation system of USA? What roles will be played by the government in the process of government-industry-university collaborative research? What kind of management and mechanism are adopted by I/UCRCs and ERCs? In which way can the government-industry-university coordinate? The study concluded that government-industry-university collaborative research centers (I/UCRCs and ERCs) of NSF have some unique features compared to current collaborative research centers in China, such as memberships, industrial advisory board and coordinating mechanism. In the aspect of organization structure, there are three basic features:firstly, the collaborative research centers are relatively independent to the university; secondly, membership can be a very effective way to strengthen the transformation of technology; thirdly, all I/UCRCs and ERCs are highly uniformed in the structure under the direction of NSF. As for the mechanism of functionality, collaborative research centers (I/UCRCs and ERCs) have standardized procedures for research, meeting and technology transfer. And all those research centers are market-oriented, especially after the end of NSF award. With the study, it is not difficult to get some reflections for those similar center’ development in China. We need to decrease the support life time and introduce more market mechanism for the continuing development of the research centers in China, such as the2011Collaborative Innovation Center.