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Since at least the 1970s, the American research university system has experienced episodic periods of austerity, frequently accompanied by expressions of concern about the threats that these conditions pose to U.S. scientific and technological leadership. In general, austerity has been tied to fluctuations in Federal Government funding of academic research and macroeconomic fluctuations that have shrunk state government budget revenues. Even amidst these episodes, the system has continued to expand and decentralize. The issue at present is whether this historic resiliency, of being a marvelous invalid, will overcome adverse contemporary trends in Federal and state government funding, as well as political trends that eat away at the societal bonds between universities and their broader publics. The paper juxtaposes examinations of the organizational and political influences that have given rise to the American research university system, trends in research revenues and research costs, and contemporary efforts by universities to balance the two. It singles out the secular decline in state government’s support of public universities as the principal reason why this period of contraction is different from those of the past. Rather though then these trends portending a market shakeout, as some at times have predicted, the projection here is that the academic research system will continue to be characterized by excess capacity and recurrent downward pressures on research costs. Because the adverse impacts are concentrated in the public university sector, they may also spill over into political threats to the current system of awarding academic research grants primarily via competitive, merit review arrangements.

It is not rare to read positive comments about North American higher education from higher education stakeholders in Europe, particularly policy-makers and institutional managers. The aspects of the system which are most often praised are the degree of institutional competition and the benefits this brings in terms of institutional flexibility, responsiveness, and adaptability. Moreover, those voices also enhance the resourcefulness of North American higher education institutions in finding alternative sources of funding to cope with the steady decline in public funding. In recent decades European higher education has felt the impact of the aforementioned trends and the effects have been not altogether dissimilar from the ones identified in North American higher education. Moreover, the growing integration of European higher education systems has also contributed to enhance some convergence with some of the trends identified in the American case. In this paper, we reflect on the impact of the increasing marketization of funding and governance mechanisms on the European higher education landscape and compare it with the impact of those trends discussed in the papers by Irwin Feller and George W. Breslauer.

Both Marianne Jelinek's chapter and this commentary examine the legal, economic, and policy environments for university–industry technology transfer and the management of intellectual property. To complement Jelinek's framework, this commentary offers an alternative conceptual framework that incorporates the role of individual scientists and also acknowledges repeat transactions that form relationships between university and industry partners.

Universities in both North America and Europe are under substantial pressure. We draw on the papers in this volume to describe those pressures and explore their consequences from an organizational standpoint. Building on the institutional logics perspective, field theories, world society theory, resource dependence, and organizational design scholarship, these papers show how the changing relationship between the state and higher education, cultural shifts, and broad trends toward globalization have led to financial pressures on universities and intensified competition among them. Universities have responded to these pressures by cutting costs, becoming more entrepreneurial, increasing administrative control, and expanding the use of rationalized tools for management. Collectively, these reactions are reshaping the field(s) of higher education and increasing stratification within and across institutions. While universities have thus far proven remarkably adaptive to these pressures, they may be reaching the limits of how much they can adapt without seriously compromising their underlying missions.

The paper aims to investigate the emergence of science policy in the states of the USA, drawing attention to the fact that every state has a science and technology agency and multiple programs that attempt to raise the level of science and technology in the state and attract resources from elsewhere.

The paper builds upon the authors' previous study of high‐tech growth and renewal in Boston and Silicon Valley through analysis of documents and interviews with key actors in universities, S&T policy units of the Governor's association to detail the bottom‐up initiatives exemplifying the US innovation policy model.

The path dependent elements in US science and technology policy are an enhanced role for universities, an ambivalent role for national government and industry and a growing role for state and local government. Federal research funds, largely confined to support of agricultural research before the Second World War, became available for a variety of civilian and military purposes, on an ongoing basis, after the war. An assisted linear model of coordinated innovation mechanisms has been constructed on this base to translate inventions into economic activity through university‐industry‐government interactions.

The paper shows that S&T policy at the state level fills gaps in university‐industry relations, leverages federal R&D spending and enhances local comparative and competitive advantage.

The purpose of this paper is to report on six Symposia offered at the 2012 Annual Meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), held 16‐20 February 2012, in Vancouver, Canada. The theme of this 178th Meeting was: “Flattening the world: building a global knowledge society.”

This report includes summaries of the salient points in each panelist's presentation for the selected Symposia, and it provides internet links to further support the content of the presenters' comments.

The AAAS 2012 Annual Meeting aimed at exploring a broad range of recent discoveries and looming global challenges. The program focused on the current complex, interconnected challenges of the twenty‐first century and on pathways to global solutions through international, multidisciplinary efforts.

This report provides insights on the current research themes such as interdisciplinary collaboration, community‐engaged scholarship, global outreach by sharing science and research data with the public, building collaboratories for research on a global scale, and reducing international knowledge isolation of the “Global South” (the nations of Africa, Central and Latin America, and most of Asia).

The center for innovation model is a growing and prominent phenomenon across corporate, government, nonprofit, and university contexts. Based on the name, one would infer an aim is to serve as a mechanism that catalyzes innovation. A further aim would be to serve as exemplars of technology development, knowledge development, and knowledge dissemination in the course of delivering a given mission. To date, little work has examined the center for innovation phenomenon and so there is a need to investigate these inferences and provide an understanding for the basis and rationale for why organizations across various contexts are pursuing centers for innovation. Examining mission statements followed by an electronic survey of 66 centers for innovation, we characterize the practices, rationales, success factors, challenges, and other descriptors of these centers in an effort to understand their operating characteristics. Results suggest four archetypes for the center for innovation model based on constituency. Results also show similarities across success factors and challenges, with sustainable funding clearly a common challenge.

“Country-collectors” (CCs) are defined here as international leisure travelers who have visited 6 +  countries within the five most recent calendar years primarily to pursue leisure activities. The study here contributes by offering an early workbench model of antecedents, paths, and outcomes of country-collectors’ evaluations and behavior toward countries as place-brands competing for such visitors. This study reports findings from a large-scale omnibus survey in three large Japanese cities (total n = 1,200). Key findings support the model and the following conclusions. Generally, country-collectors represent a small share of a nation’s adult population (less than 5%) but over 40% of the total leisure trips abroad; country-collectors are classifiable into distinct sub-segments according to the country place-brands that they visit; CC sub-segments, less frequent international leisure travelers, and stay-in-country travelers and non-travelers each offer unique assessments of competing countries as place-brands. National place-brand strategists planning a marketing campaign to influence a given nation’s residents to visit a specific destination (e.g., persuading Japanese nationals to visit the United States) may increase the campaign’s effectiveness by using this workbench model. The study offers a blueprint of how to appraise strengths and weaknesses of competing national place-brands among realized and potential visitors in specific national markets.