Jay P. Kesan – författare

Since the end of the Cold War, federal funding for research at American universities has sharply decreased, leaving administrators searching for a new benefactor. At the same time, changes in federal policy permitting universities to patent, license, and profit from their discoveries combined with the emergence of new fields that thinned the lines between 'basic' and 'applied' research to make universities an attractive partner to private industry. This reorientation from public to private funding has created new challenges for the academy. In thirteen insightful and wide-ranging essays, Defining Values for Research and Technology examines the modern research university in the throes of transition. Contributors discuss the tensions of research versus education, public funding versus corporatization, and the academic freedom of open discussion versus the secrecy needed to ensure financial gain. Will universities and their professors pursue industrial imperatives at the expense of traditional academic values, or will they harness the energy of industry to advance a mission of research for the public good? Defining Values for Research and Technology, while acknowledging potential dangers, argues that university-industry partnerships have the potential to both benefit industrial expansion and enrich academic life. In doing so, it raises important points about the connections between 'pure' science and industrialized technology more generally, and the role that policy plays in science. Both those interested in the evolution of the academy and scholars of the history and sociology of science will find something worthwhile within its pages.

Since the end of the Cold War, federal funding for research at American universities has sharply decreased, leaving administrators searching for a new benefactor. At the same time, changes in federal policy permitting universities to patent, license, and profit from their discoveries combined with the emergence of new fields that thinned the lines between 'basic' and 'applied' research to make universities an attractive partner to private industry. This reorientation from public to private funding has created new challenges for the academy. In thirteen insightful and wide-ranging essays, Defining Values for Research and Technology examines the modern research university in the throes of transition. Contributors discuss the tensions of research versus education, public funding versus corporatization, and the academic freedom of open discussion versus the secrecy needed to ensure financial gain. Will universities and their professors pursue industrial imperatives at the expense of traditional academic values, or will they harness the energy of industry to advance a mission of research for the public good? Defining Values for Research and Technology, while acknowledging potential dangers, argues that university-industry partnerships have the potential to both benefit industrial expansion and enrich academic life. In doing so, it raises important points about the connections between 'pure' science and industrialized technology more generally, and the role that policy plays in science. Both those interested in the evolution of the academy and scholars of the history and sociology of science will find something worthwhile within its pages.

Este libro presenta un analisis institucional de los derechos de propiedad intelectual, las instituciones politicas y la innovacion en el contexto de las regulaciones de variedades de semillas en Argentina. Los autores analizan como el mercado mundial de innovacion en semillas ha cambiado hacia un sistema global, sostenido por empresas multinacionales, lo que requiere de un marco de definicion y cumplimiento estrictos de los derechos de propiedad intelectual. Diversos paises han convergido a traves de iniciativas como los ADPIC y los acuerdos UPOV (1978 y 1991). Argentina no ha sido ajena a estas necesidades de modernizacion de su marco legal. Sin embargo, no se ha podido avanzar con cambios significativos y, en 2018-2019, importantes propuestas de reforma legislativa fracasaron debido a conflictos de intereses politicos y economicos internos. Los autores emplean un enfoque institucional de economia politica, mostrando como el cambio legal no depende de la eficiencia de las politicas, sino de la dinamica de los grupos de interes, el lobby, y las restricciones institucionales. El caso argentino ofrece una vision mas amplia de las dificultades para armonizar los regimenes de propiedad intelectual en los paises en desarrollo, donde los ecosistemas de innovacion, el poder economico y la capacidad regulatoria estan desarrollados de manera desigual. Este analisis destaca la necesidad de generar propuestas de marcos legales que sean politicamente viables y que puedan complementar los incentivos a la innovacion con las realidades socioeconomicas locales. Tambien resalta la influencia de lideres politicos que, en momentos particulares, pueden superar los escollos politicos e instaurar una nueva dinamica institucional.