Given the complex interdependence of our contemporary world, the challenges of global governance are exceedingly daunting. The task is made all the more difficult because most of the international institutions we still rely upon to manage contemporary global challenges were originally created and designed more than 60 years ago. They …
Singapore: Successful in Research, Striving for Innovation
Across the World, governments subscribe to the thesis that investment in research is a worthwhile public good for a number of reasons. Such investments are generally predicated on the view that research will lead directly to innovation and, hence, to wealth and employment creation. This “linear” model is an over-simplification …
KAUST: An International, Independent, Graduate Research University
Education, research and economic development are among the highest priorities established by King Abdullah for Saudi Arabia. An equally important overriding priority for him is the development of women for greater participation in the workforce. According to UNESCO, women make up 58% of the total student population of Saudi Arabia, …
Industry as a Catalyst of Innovation
Success today hinges on our abilities to harness human potential, combine creativity with new knowledge and ensure economic impact is quickly derived from money spent on research. U.S. strength continues to lie in the ability to master innovation, but the future increasingly depends on our ability to also collaborate,
INTRODUCTION: Respice, Prospice Higher Education A Decennial Review
If “[a] week”, as the late British Prime Minister Harold Wilson once pointedly remarked, “is a long time in politics”, so also, a decade is a long time in higher education. It represents the graduation of two or three generations of students. It reflects the subtle influence of changing scholarly …
Injecting Relevance to make Innovation more Impactful at Universities
After a short tenure in teaching at universities, I have pursued an entrepreneurial career since 1980. Nine years ago, when I joined the MICorporation in Cambridge, Massachusetts, I got reconnected back to the academic world. Together with other like-minded individuals at MIT, I have been experimenting with ways in which …
Transforming an Economy through Research and Innovation
In the race to diversify their economies beyond oil and gas predominance, several Middle East Countries are moving to develop “knowledge-based” economies. Higher education, particularly in technical areas, and innovation are seen as key to making that transition. New higher education institutions are being built
On Innovation Strategies: An Asian Perspective
Innovation has become the buzzword of the 21st century and even more so now after the current economic meltdown, as nations around the world have the enormous task of rebuilding their economies. It is generally agreed that innovation refers to the process of converting an idea, invention or scientific discovery …
The Next decade, a Challenge for Technological and Societal Innovations
About 25 years ago, the world entered a period that we can call — although it is not brutal or quasi-instantaneous, but progressive — a revolution, which is rooted in political and economic, as well as scientific and technological forces. This revolution has brought increasing prosperity to the developed world …
The Challenge of Establishing World-Class Research Universities in Developing Countries
Preoccupations about university rankings reflect the general recognition that economic growth and global competitiveness are increasingly driven by knowledge and that universities play a key role in that context. Indeed, rapid advances in science and technology across a wide range of areas — from information and communication technologies
The German Excellence Initiative: Changes, Challenges and Chances
For more than 200 years, the German university system has followed the ideas of Wilhelm von Humboldt — the unity of research and teaching, the freedom of teaching being the most important of Humboldt’s principles. These ideas have been followed until today, even though the external conditions that universities have …
National Innovation Policies Governments as Innovation Agents of Higher Education and Research
There is widespread agreement among economists that international forces have changed the nature of economic development (Soete, 2006). National markets have become increasingly interrelated, and goods, services, capital, labour, as well as knowledge, flow around the world seeking the most favourable economic conditions. Natural resources
Hi-Tech Industry and Universities: A Perspective on Dating for Joint Innovation
As recorded since the very beginning of our written history, knowledge has been progressing by accumulating the experience of past and present generations (Van Doren, 1991). The creation of new knowledge has been performed by various actors: priests, hunters, philosophers, farmers, artists, craftsmen, soldiers, faculties,
Doing Good by Doing Little: University Responsibility in a Violent Setting
Lebanon’s very name evokes images of civil strife and destruction, of a society almost hopelessly divided and open to exploitation by state and non state actors well beyond its borders. It is estimated that as many as 100,000 (out of a population of ca. 3.5 million) Lebanese lost their lives …
Response of Chinese Higher Education and SJTU to Globalization
Globalization means more competition and that a nation’s investment, production and innovation are not limited by its borders. Internationalization, according to Levin (2001), is one set of behaviour influenced by globalization processes. These processes are not only political and economic, but also social and cultural,
Japanese University Reform
In order to understand the radical changes that Japanese universities have been undergoing in recent years, the observer has to keep in mind three essential facts: the demographic factor as an engine behind the changes, the ongoing political drive to a reorganization of the university management structure and the need …
Comprehensive Universities in Continental Europe: Falling Behind
Universities in continental Europe have a long tradition of nearly one thousand years, incorporating the idea of the “Greek academia”. The foundation of universities spread rapidly throughout medieval Europe, with Bologna (1088) and Paris (1150) as the first, acting as models for the others to come. The university started as …
Developed Universities and the Developing World: Opportunities and Obligations
Among the scores of books written during the past decade about globalization — so many, in fact, that some by different authors bear the same title 1 — none has captured as many readers as Thomas L. Freidman’s The World Is Flat: A Brief History of the Twenty-First Century (2005). …
Science and Technology in Brazil
Scientists in Brazil published 16,950 scientific articles in indexed journals in 2005. The country is the 17th-largest producer of science in the world. Nine out of ten of these articles were generated in public university laboratories. Scientists and engineers in business sector R&D activities created several cases of world-class competitive …
Globalization of Research Universities in Korea
An important consequence of economic globalization is expected to be that only a few leading universities will dominate the world of higher education, just as a few companies are dominating different industrial sectors worldwide. Globalization has thus become a major goal for most research universities in Korea. It is driven …