zhsky

Universities have been naively viewed as engines of innovation that pump out new ideas that can be easily translated into commercial innovations and regional growth. This has led to overly mechanistic national and regional policies that seek to commercialize those ideas and transfer them to private sector.. Although there is nothing wrong with these policies that encourage joint research, this view misses the larger economic picture: universities are far more important as the nation's primary source of knowledge creation and talent. Smart people are the most critical resource to any economy...

...If federal, state, and local policymakers truly want to leverage universities to spawn economic growth, they must adopt a new view. They have to stop encouraging matches between university and industry for their own sake. Instead, they must focus on strengthening the university's ability to attract the smartest people around the world - the true wellspring of the creative economy. By attracting these people and rapidly and widely disseminating the knowledge they create, universities will have much a greater effect on the nation's economy as well as regional growth. For their part, universities must become vigilant against government policies and industry agreements that limit or delay the intellectual property researchers can disclose.

Richard Florida. Cities And The Creative Class.
Routhledge. London - New York. 2005.