Industry-academe collaboration for research and development

Four forms of industry-academe linkage activities involve the sharing of economic value arising out of the generation of intellectual property: collaborative R&D, commissioned research, technology licensing, and the creation of spin-off companies. The Philippines is still in an emergent stage in all these forms. It has concerns that are the same as or similar to those of some other developing ASEAN countries. While there are particular government regulations that can hinder R&D initiatives, the Philippine legal environment, in general, can be considered enabling for the development of R&D capability in both academe and industry and for technology commercialization. The scales of S&T manpower-building programs and R&D expenditures, however, fall short of the potential enabled by legislation. The scales are at least an order of magnitude below those of countries that have successfully embarked on R&D capacity-building in the past decades. As a manifestation of this overall weakness, industry-academe collaboration in R&D is also feeble. This paper recommends the implementation of a massive S&T manpower-building program employing the existing systems of science high schools and public and private HEIs, the creation of a university of science and technology if total current HEI capacity proves inadequate, and the transformation of some existing public universities into research universities. With an overall improvement in R&D capability, R&D collaboration and technology commercialization will also be enhanced.