Faculty Engagement in University-Industry Linkages in Turkey and the United States: National Technocenters versus Ecosystems of Knowledge

Most of the literature on innovation has focused on high-income nations with strong neoliberal economies, in which faculty become actors immersed in global markets and ecosystems of knowledge transfer. Based on the concepts of techno-nationalism and techno-globalism, this study contrasts a country representative of these innovation systems, the United States, with a representative of a middle-income economy having an R&D strategy heavily regulated and controlled by the government for national interests, Turkey. We developed a survey investigating the academic profession in relation to university-industry linkages and implemented it among faculty at the University of Missouri in the USA and Hacettepe University in Turkey. We found that faculty in the USA tend to be more entrepreneurial than Turkish faculty, seizing opportunities to capitalize on networks of knowledge and placing high value on networking and collegiality with industry representatives. Ironically, faculty in Turkey ended up much more involved with industry due to the aggressive funneling of resources and incentives on the part of the government. Government-centralized approaches to R&D might result in research better aligned with national priorities and, some might argue, with the public good, but perhaps with an even higher toll on university autonomy and academic freedom than market-based approaches.