Industry and Higher Education

In the past several years various published papers have questioned whether the Bayh–Dole Act of 1980 (The University and Small Business Patent Procedures Act) has in reality been a determining factor in promoting the transfer of technology from US universities, as has been credited to it. This paper responds to that criticism, presenting facts and analysis in support of the contributions universities have made under the auspices of the Act. The authors point out flawed interpretations and misreadings of pertinent data by critics and discuss the circumstances surrounding the inception, passage and implementation of Bayh–Dole.

In spite of the importance often attached to the role played by leadership in university-based cooperative research centres, we know very little about what ‘leadership’ means in this specific context. The research reported here used a qualitative approach to identify fifteen dimensions of leadership performance for directors of university-based cooperative research centres, which might serve as the basis of a future quantitative leadership performance measure. Nineteen university faculty members working in research centres were interviewed, and their responses were content-analysed to identify both facilitators and inhibitors of centre directors' performance. Facilitative performance dimensions included: technical expertise, ambition/work ethic, broad thinking, embracing ambiguity, balancing competing stakeholders, leveraging social capital, obtaining resources, navigating bureaucracy, granting autonomy, interpersonal skill, team building and task adaptability. Inhibiting performance dimensions included: abrasiveness, disorganization and conflict avoidance. The results are discussed in terms of the commonalities and particularities they reveal about cooperative centre leadership relative to leadership performance in other settings.

Both higher education institutions and employers need to evaluate the factors that influence students' career goals and career-related decisions because of their importance to and impact on career management and decision making. The objective of this study is to identify the importance of career goals and factors influencing students' career decision making in South Africa. A non-probability sample was selected, with 488 completed responses. The findings indicate that there are significant differences between gender and ethnic groups in terms of the importance of career goals and career influencing factors. The results suggest that high-quality education is needed in conjunction with industry involvement through proper job training and/or internships.

This paper investigates, through quantitative and qualitative analysis, inventive activity in the modern technological setting of Wales in the 21st century. The paper reports on the barriers, motivations and drivers to inventors becoming entrepreneurs in exploiting their ideas and taking them to market, and indicates the outcomes of a pilot phase of the Wales Inventors' Questionnaire (WIQ). The paper concludes by considering some of the barriers, motivations and drivers faced by the inventors – both those suggested by inventors themselves and those reported in the academic literature – and possible ways of overcoming difficulties. From the findings, it is proposed that there is more to the inventive process than the barriers, motivations and drivers observed and that personal characteristics may inhibit or inspire the individual inventor.

Fundamental changes in how economies function and how organizations are structured and managed in a global environment have created a new imperative for enterprise education. Higher education has to concern itself with appropriate and effective programmes that develop enterprising graduates in an endeavour to drive forward a knowledge-based enterprising society. This paper explores the complexities associated with enterprise education provision which have influenced the emergence of diverse theories and diverse meanings. Given the diverse nature of enterprise education and the absence of a definite conceptual framework, it can be argued that higher education has to address a plethora of challenges to satisfy the different expectations of government, business and students within a global context while noting that these expectations can be conflicting. Apart from varied and conflicting expectations, broad interpretations of enterprise education add to the diversity of outcomes. The plausibility of reconciling different expectations for enterprise education has hindered its wider applicability and general consensual value. This paper makes a case for the use of an experiential learning model to adapt and amend learning outcomes for different purposes and priorities while not losing sight of the essence of being enterprising. The final section outlines briefly how the practice of experiential learning at Durban University of Technology attempts to address the challenges of enterprise education.