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Converting Academic Expertize into Industrial Innovation: University-based Research at Solvay and Gevaert, 1900–1970

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  18 February 2015

Kenneth Bertrams
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Abstract

The question this article seeks to address relates to the strategies deployed by the chemical firms Solvay & Co. and Gevaert N.V.—two multinationals operating in a highly innovative sector and depending on Belgium's national system of innovation—by taking advantage from the research capabilities located in the surrounding academic landscape. The two companies adopted different methods to capture the knowledge produced in university laboratories, which corresponded best to the kind of research they wished to explore. It will be argued that, instead of conforming to any previous blueprint for linear innovation, industrialists and academics have sought to overcome their conflicting interests and cultural divergence by bringing out mutual opportunities that eventually led to unexpected forms of utilitarian cooperation. In the long run, informal linkages and social networks helped shaping the patterns of increasingly coordinated and elaborated procedures of innovation.

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Articles
Information
Enterprise & Society , Volume 8 , Issue 4 , December 2007 , pp. 807 - 841
Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s) 2007. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of the Business History Conference. All rights reserved.

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