Ulrich has made two small sub-contracts with researchers of the University of Bielefeld and of the University of Bonn for conducting the German case studies . Click on More to read the minutes from the meeting planning the work for these case studies.

Location: Köln
Date: March 29, 2006
Participants:
University Bielfeld:
Prof. Dr. Georg Krücken, Dipl.-Soz. Frank Meier, Dipl.-Soz. Andre Müller
University Dortmund
Dipl.-Soz. Henrik Cohnen,
Fraunhofer ISI, Karlsruhe
PD Dr. Ulrich Schmoch

The German case studies will refer to the University of Bielefeld and the University of Dortmund. Both universities are located in the federal state (Bundesland) “Nordrhein-Westfalen”. They are two among 14 universities in this state. These two universities were selected, as Dortmund has a distinct focus on the engineering sciences, whereas the University of Bielefeld is primarily active in the social sciences and humanities. In reality, both universities include departments of other disciplines as well. In particular, the University of Bielefeld has build up departments in chemistry and biology, and the University of Dortmund has a department for sociology and education science.

The University of Dortmund was chosen to reflect the strong German trend to exclu-sively link the third mission of universities to technology transfer. However, first explo-rations show that a large share of spin-out firms have a focus on pedagogics and not technology. Nevertheless, the focus of the research should be on technology transfer activites. The University of Bielefeld was selected to investigate in more depth which third mis-sion activities exist apart from technology transfer.

The researchers from both universities will try to collect as much quantitative informa-tion as possible in order to assess the order of magnitude of the third mission activities and their distribution by departments. However, first explorations have shown that in particular with regard to the non-technological third mission activities only incomplete data are available.

The German project team agrees to the questionnaire suggested in the draft outline for the case studies suggested by Bo Göransson. As to the potential interview partners, the team decided to limit them to representatives of the university. In Germany, the innovation system is so complex – with the mixed responsibility of the federal states and central government for education and research - that the inclusion of other stake-holders would lead to anecdotic, non-consistent results. The team intends to achieve a sufficiently critical mass of interviews at the universities, so that a certain differentiation by disciplines is possible. As to the perspective of other stakeholders, the German case studies will refer to other studies in this context, in particular studies of the University of Bielefeld and Fraunhofer ISI. The study for Bielefeld will give a general introduction as to the structures in Nordrhein-Westfalen.

In the interviews, a special focus will be on the perspectives of third mission activities and their impact on the primary and secondary mission (education and research), as experiences of the team members seem to indicate an increasing conflict between these activities.

Karlsruhe, April 10, 2006
Ulrich Schmoch