Introduction

From the 1980s industry’s acquisition of externally developed technology became a focus of public policy and of academic research. The sentiments in the UK’s Department of Industry report quoted above regarding industry’s need to capitalize on the knowledge resources in the science base were replicated in government reports from countries in the developed and the developing world. At the same time, academic studies in Europe and in the US were documenting the growing complexity and spatial diversity of the innovation process in which industry and academic links had become measurably stronger. Studies, like the one discussed in this book, were predicated on the assumption that the balance of innovation had in some ways shifted away from the firm as the focal point, into universities and national laboratories, which for the purposes of this book are described as the public sector science base (PSSB(.