University & Business Cooperation

University & Business Cooperation

Universities are the centers of education, R&D, invention and innovation that produce technologies, prepare plans/projects and commercialize them, in cooperation with the business world. We can describe some of the main objectives of universities as follows, as stated in Article 4/c of Law No. 2547: “…As higher education institutions, to contribute to universal and contemporary development by conducting scientific researches at high levels, producing information and technology, disseminating science data, supporting domestic development, and becoming an outstanding member of the scientific world by cooperating with both domestic and foreign institutions.”

Universities: The Friend of Scientific World

As it can be seen, universities are the highest educational institutions that conduct scientific studies and researches at high levels, produce information and technology, and contribute to the development of trade and industry, and therefore to the growth of the economy by transferring all these know-how to the business world. The university-business cooperation shows its most important impact in the development of the country, the increase of the technological level and the strengthening of the scientific world. Looking at history, World War II, which was actually a science and technology war, has significantly improved university-industry cooperation and became a milestone in the development of science and technology. The success of the scientific research projects carried out during the war (radar, Manhattan atomic bomb etc.) has increased bureaucracy’s and public’s trust in research projects, and the resources devoted by large companies to scientific and technological R&D activities have further increased following the war. In 1980s, a brand new university-industry cooperation approach was developed in the US and European countries, as a result of the fact that Far Eastern countries, Japan in the lead, have mainly focused on innovations in electronics, making electronics market a valuable goods and services market globally. These developments were followed, in 1990s, by new formations in which spin-off companies (a company established to commercialize the knowledge and skills of a university) were born, and private sector and consulting activities were modeled.

The number of universities in some countries and the ratio of universities to the population

There are two issues we need to think about at this point. The first is that we have not been able to establish the required number of universities, and the second is that we have not been able to scale up the education, training, science and business relations of our universities to global standards. Of course we have many valuable universities, but unfortunately there are not enough of them. We know that the organizations that managed to have the best university–business cooperation are technoparks and technocities.

Technocities in the World

Technoparks, which emerged in the US in 1951 with the Silicon Valley–Stanford Research Park, are the most successful model of university–business cooperation. In many countries, the sound transformation of university–industry relations into cooperation and an important part of the added value they produce in the production and service sectors occur at technoparks. The competitiveness of knowledge-based institutions and companies in the regions where technoparks are established to improve and strengthen the quality of invention and innovation in the field of technology, can be described as follows:

• Universities encourage and facilitate the exchange of information and technology between research centers, companies and markets,
• They support the establishment and development of spin–off companies based on innovation,
• They provide high-quality office spaces and support services to their stakeholders to be used for R&D studies,
• They are experts in invention and innovation and create an effective human capital,
• They develop an ecosystem related to inventions and innovations,
• They are organizations that are managed professionally.

Silicon Valley

This valley, which is one of the most exemplary valleys in the world, is located in San Francisco Valley in Southern California, US. Companies such as Microsoft, Oracle, Facebook, Intel, Google, Cisco, Apple, XEros, Hewlett–Packard, Adobe System, Sandisk etc. are located in this valley. As one can easily understand from these examples, the companies in the valley are the most technologically advanced companies in the world and they have a vision/mission that meets the needs of both the economy and industry, as well as us.

Boston Massachusetts
Number of companies: 3600, Major Companies
LOTUS (IBM), LYCOS, CYBER
Salt Lake City, Utah
Number of companies: 2120, Major Companies
NOVELL, OMEGA, EVANS,
SUTHERLAND
Seattle, Washington
Number of companies: 2500, Major Companies
MICROSOFT
Austin -Texas
Number of companies: 1750, Major Companies
DELL
Cambridge UK
Berlin Technology center
Sophia Antipolis
Helsinki, Finland
Tel Aviv, Israel