changes in academy/industry/state relations in canada: the creation and development of the networks...

DONALD FISHER, JANET ATKINSON-GROSJEAN and DAWN HOUSE

CHANGES IN ACADEMY/INDUSTRY/STATE RELATIONS INCANADA: THE CREATION AND DEVELOPMENT OF THE

NETWORKS OF CENTRES OF EXCELLENCE

ABSTRACT. The Networks of Centres of Excellence programme is perhaps Canada’smost dramatic science policy innovation since the First World War. This article traces itsdevelopment, using documentary analysis and interviews with the policy actors responsiblefor conceiving and implementing the programme. Established in 1989, the networks wereexplicitly designed to change the norms of science. The intention was to instil an approachto long-term fundamental research that considered possibilities of use from the start. Ofequal importance was the idea that management was essential to produce knowledge in anetwork structure.

INTRODUCTION

The creation of Canada’s Networks of Centres of Excellence (NCE)programme in 1989 has been arguably the most dramatic change in thenation’s science policy since the National Research Council was estab-lished in 1916. This innovation emerged in the context of changing formsof ideological dominance. As the social contract between science andsociety became rewritten around economistic goals, universities and theirresearch programmes were discursively repositioned as components ofnational systems of innovation.1 The internal normative structure of the‘Republic of Science’ responded, adapting to attempts by government toclose the ‘gap’ between academy and industry, and to make scientificresearch more commercial.2

The NCE came about within this agenda. It was announced in 1988,as part of a new Federal programme of initiatives in science and tech-

1 David H. Guston and Kenneth Keniston, ‘Introduction: The Social Contract forScience’, in David H. Guston and Kenneth Keniston (eds.), The Fragile Contract:University Science and the Federal Government (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1994),1–41.

2 Michael Polanyi, ‘The Republic of Science: Its Political and Economic Theory’(reprinted from Minerva 1 (1962), 54–73), Minerva, 38 (1), (2000), 1–21.

Minerva 39: 299–325, 2001.© 2001 Kluwer Academic Publishers. Printed in the Netherlands.

300 DONALD FISHER ET AL.

nology (InnovAction).3 Threatened with cancellation in the mid-1990s, itwas eventually made permanent in 1997, and is now a central elementin Canada’s science and technology policy. By the end of the fiscal year2000/01, a total of twenty-nine networks had been funded in areas deemedstrategically important to Canada’s prosperity and international competi-tiveness.4 Collaboration, partnership, and excellence are the key words inthe lexicon of this effort to ‘stimulate leading-edge fundamental and long-term applied research of importance to Canada’.5 What makes this effortunique in Canadian policy history is the explicit attempt to alter the cultureof science, and to manage research.

This paper describes and analyses the policy-making process of theNCE. The first section introduces the social theory and methodologythat we have employed. The second, describes the leading features ofCanadian science and technology policy before the NCE. The final sectiondescribes and analyses NCE policy from the late-1980s to the late-1990s.We trace the policy impact of changing definitions of science and scientificexcellence, and discuss how these policies were designed to contribute tonational economic well-being.

Our overall thesis is that science and technology policy emerges from,and is set firmly within, competing definitions of science, utility, and the‘public good’. This is historically evident. What is less obvious, is thatat the policy level, the interests of capital are now being privileged underthe guise of serving the national interest. By promoting industry accessto publicly funded research, this policy recognizes that scientific researchis simultaneously fundamental and useful, while skewing the balance infavour of private and commercial science. The NCE offers a major chal-lenge to traditional conceptions of academic autonomy and the publicnature of knowledge.

3 The first networks came onstream in 1990.4 At the time of writing, eighteen networks were pursuing research on arthritis,

aquaculture, stroke, bacterial diseases, genetic diseases, protein engineering, vaccines,telecommunications, geomatics, health evidence systems, robotics, structural sensingsystems, mathematics of complex systems, wood-pulps, microelectronics, sustainableforest management, distance learning, and photonics. In March 2001, after a year-longtargeted competition, four new networks were announced – in stem cell genomics, child-hood literacy, ‘clean water’, and advanced automotive engineering. Earlier networks,which lost funding at some stage of the renewal cycle, studied neuroscience, respiratorydisease, concrete, ageing, molecular facial dynamics, fisheries, space science, and pestcontrol in agriculture. The ageing network chose not to apply for renewal for reasonsrelated to the status of the social sciences in the early years of the NCE programme.

5 Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council, Networks of Centres of Excel-lence: Powerful Partnerships (Ottawa: Minister of Supply and Services, Canada, 1992).

NETWORKS OF CENTRES OF EXCELLENCE 301

APPROACHING THE NCE

We began our study concerned with boundaries, and the work peopledo to create, maintain, and break down boundaries between knowledgedomains.6 Boundaries direct attention to power, and to the processeswhereby legitimacy and cognitive authority come about. We chose to focusupon the boundaries that are held to separate basic and applied research,science and policy, and public and private conceptions of propriety inknowledge production.

In defending the argument that governments should invest in basicresearch, Michel Callon points to the confrontation between the logicof disclosure and the free circulation of ideas, and the logic of propri-etary knowledge and secrecy.7 He notes that the thesis of the market’sunder-investment in research is becoming difficult to support, as ‘publiclaboratories are one after another falling into private hands, either directlythrough takeovers and cooperative arrangements or indirectly throughincentives and research programs’.8 To Callon, science has always been‘potentially privatizable’; to maintain it in the public domain requiresmuch effort from scientists, the state, and institutions ‘created and rein-forced over centuries’. Principal among such institutions are universities.Toby Huff argues that by establishing a ‘neutral space’ of thought and

6 Donald Fisher, ‘Boundary Work and Science: The Relation Between Power andKnowledge’, in Susan Cozzens and Thomas Gieryn (eds.), Theories of Science in Society(Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1990), 98–119; Donald Fisher, The SocialSciences in Canada: Fifty Years of National Activity by the Social Science Federationof Canada (Waterloo: Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 1991); Donald Fisher, Funda-mental Development of the Social Sciences: Rockefeller Philanthropy and the United StatesSocial Science Research Council (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1993); DonaldFisher, ‘A Matter of Trust: Rockefeller Philanthropy and the Creation of the Social ScienceResearch Councils in the United States and Canada’, in Theresa Richardson and DonaldFisher (eds.), The Development of the Social Sciences in the United States and Canada:The Role of Philanthropy (Stamford, Conn.: Ablex Publishing Corporation, 1999), 75–93; Thomas F. Gieryn, ‘Boundaries of Science’, in Sheila Jasanoff, Gerald E. Markle,James C. Petersen and Trevor Pinch (eds.), Handbook of Science and Technology Studies(Thousand Oaks, London, New Delhi: Sage, 1995), 393–443; Thomas F. Gieryn, CulturalBoundaries of Science: Credibility on the Line (Chicago: University of Chicago Press,1999).

7 Michel Callon, ‘Is Science a Public Good?’, Science, Technology, and Human Values,19 (4), (Autumn 1994), 395–424. This discussion is extended in Janet Atkinson-Grosjean,‘Adventures in the Nature of Trade: Network Science, Russian Dolls, and a Grand Dicho-tomy’, conference paper presented at Demarcation Socialized: Or, How Can We RecognizeScience When We See It? (Cardiff University, Wales, August, 2000).

8 Callon, ‘Is Science a Public Good?’, op. cit. note 7, 401.


Research inspired by: Considerations of Use?

No Yes

Quest for Fundamental Yes Pure Basic Research Use-inspired Basic Research

Understanding? (Bohr) (Pasteur)

No Research directed to Pure Applied Research

particular phenomena (Edison)

(Wissenschaft)

Figure 1. Stokes’s Quadrant Model of Scientific Research

action between public and private, the universities institutionalized basicresearch.9 By contrast, technological advance was historically the domainof industry.

The distance between the laboratory and the market has been erodingfor some time. Before the Second World War, the relationship betweenscience and innovation was repositioned by scientists and engineersseeking to demarcate their professions and distinguish themselves fromthe mechanical arts. In analysing the rhetoric employed in the US from1880 to 1945, Ronald Kline notes that as a means to gain financial supportscientists tended to argue that ‘pure’ or ‘basic’ or ‘fundamental’ sciencewas the essential basis for technological innovation; engineers, on the otherhand, even while conducting fundamental research, positioned themselvesas an ‘applied science’ to raise their occupational status to the level of alearned profession.10

Donald Stokes agrees that the basic/applied distinction is highly artifi-cial.11 A large proportion of scientific research is, and always has been,both useful and fundamental, suggests Stokes; and the theory/practice,basic/applied dichotomy renders this significant segment of the researchspectrum invisible. Stokes employs an illuminating typology, illustratedin Figure 1, classifying fundamental ‘understanding-based’ research as‘Bohr’s Quadrant’, and applied ‘use-inspired’ research as ‘Edison’s Quad-rant’. Research that is both useful and fundamental resides in between,in ‘Pasteur’s Quadrant’. In Stokes’s view, it is this dual commitment tounderstanding and use that characterizes much of the research endeavour.Stokes has captured the essence of the contemporary pursuit of knowledge.

9 Toby E. Huff, ‘Science and the Public Sphere: Comparative Institutional Developmentin Islam and the West’, Social Epistemology, 11 (1), (1997), 25–37.

10 Ronald Kline, ‘Construing “Technology” as “Applied Science”: Public Rhetoric ofScientists and Engineers in the United States, 1880–1945’, Isis, 86 (1995), 194–221.

11 Donald E. Stokes, Pasteur’s Quadrant: Basic Science and Technological Innovation(Washington, DC: Brookings Institution Press, 1997).


Control over research priorities has historically been set by scientiststhemselves. Forms and practices of behaviour were in place well beforeRobert Boyle convened an ‘invisible college’ in Oxford and London.Derek Price borrowed and extended the metaphor, reminding us that small,informal collectives of closely interacting scientists are the principal meansof scientific advance. Subsequently, Diana Crane defined an ‘invisiblecollege’ as an informal interpersonal network based on shared scientificinterests, rather than geographic proximity. As Philip Agre points out, ‘so-called invisible colleges are in many ways more visible to the researchersthan the physical campuses where they organize their places of work’.12

The distributed and informal nature of scientific interaction is alsocaptured in the term ‘communities of practice’.13 Like invisible colleges,communities of practice cut across formal institutions and organiza-tions. They are self-organizing, self-selecting groups of colleagues whosemembers are informally bound together by their shared expertise. Theconcept of communities of practice maps onto the scientific ‘thought-collectives’ identified by Ludwik Fleck. A thought-collective is definedas ‘a community of persons mutually exchanging ideas or maintainingintellectual interaction’; thought-collectives provide ‘the special “carrier”for the historical development of any field of thought, as well as for thegiven stock of knowledge and level of culture’.14

These attributes can be identified in successful inter-organizationalbiotechnology networks.15 Walter Powell et al. find that these networks

12 Derek de Solla Price, Little Science, Big Science (New York: Columbia Univer-sity Press, 1963); Diana Crane, Invisible Colleges: Diffusion of Knowledge in ScientificCommunities (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1972); Philip E. Agre, ‘VisibleColleges: Infrastructure and Institutional Change’, in The Networked University (postedat <http://dlis.gseis.ucla.edu/pagre/>, Los Angeles: Department of Information Studies,UCLA, draft paper dated 12 May 1999).

13 Jean Lave and Etienne Wenger, Situated Learning: Legitimate Peripheral Participa-tion (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991).

14 Thaddeus J. Trenn and Robert K. Merton (eds.), Ludwik Fleck, Genesis and Devel-opment of a Scientific Fact, Thomas S. Kuhn (Foreword), Fred Bradley and Thaddeus J.Trenn (trans.), (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1979), 39.

15 Walter W. Powell, ‘Inter-organizational Collaboration in the Biotechnology Industry’,Journal of Institutional and Theoretical Economics, 152, (1996), 197–215; Walter W.Powell, Kenneth W. Koput and Laurel Smith-Doerr, ‘Interorganizational Collaboration andthe Locus of Innovation: Networks of Learning in Biotechnology’, Administrative ScienceQuarterly, 41 (March 1996), 116–145; Jane E. Fountain, ‘Social Capital: A Key Enabler ofInnovation’, in Lewis M. Branscomb and James H. Keller (eds.), Investing in Innovation:Creating a Research and Innovation Policy That Works (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press,1998), 85–111. Fountain summarizes network attributes as: (1) trustful relations foundedon experience; (2) limited numbers of players to facilitate information sharing; (3) thenetwork is valued more highly than immediate self-interest; (4) clearly defined boundaries


of relationships ‘serve as the primary institutional arrangement governingexchange and production’ in biotechnology.16 Networks and collabora-tions expand access to available knowledge, and thereby allow firms andother organizations to extend their competencies. The resulting coopera-tion promotes what Powell and colleagues call a ‘community-level mutu-alism’. These relationships challenge traditional understandings not onlyof what is public and private, but also of what constitutes basic and applied.

In what follows, we explore the relevant cultural and socioeconomicconsiderations that influenced the origins and development of the NCEprogramme. Our documentary sources were complemented by inter-views with seventeen key participants, on Federal government premisesin Ottawa. Because we focus upon government initiatives in developingacademy–industry–state relations, we ‘privilege’ the government pointof view. This partial perspective will be made fuller in other studies ofthe institutions, scientific communities, graduate students, and industrialparticipants in the NCE. The interviewees were mostly past and presentFederal officials, with science degrees and employment experience in thegovernment or university sector. As access was premised on a guarantee ofanonymity, we identify them as either ‘policy adviser’, ‘civil servant’, or‘programme officer’.

SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY POLICY: THE CONTEXT17

In Canada, science and technology policy is a reflection of the indirectrelationship between universities and the Federal government. Canada’s‘soft federalism’ – the constitutional division of powers – devolves manyresponsibilities to the provinces. While the Federal government fundsuniversity operations through transfer payments to the provinces, it hasno direct influence upon higher education and receives little credit for itsfunding role. Funding of academic research is the only avenue open to theFederal government for shaping academic activities. The NCE programme– the forging of a national research capacity under direct Federal control –constitutes a Federal incursion into provincial powers over the universities.

and objectives; (6) clearly defined rules of operation; (7) established sanctions gradu-ated so as not to destroy the network; and (8) established conflict resolution mechanisms(Branscomb and Keller, Investing in Innovation, op. cit. this note, 90–91).

16 Powell et al., ‘Interorganizational Collaboration and the Locus of Innovation:Networks of Learning in Biotechnology’, op. cit., note 15, 197.

17 Parts of this section draw upon Janet Atkinson-Grosjean, ‘Science and TechnologyPolicy and University Research: Comparing Canada and the United States, 1979 to 1999’,International Journal of Technology Policy and Management (forthcoming, Spring 2001).


Before the 1980s, the history of Canadian science policy was aseries of piecemeal attempts to encourage industrial R&D and techno-logical innovation. The development of industrial research capacity wasa leading reason for founding the National Research Council (NRC)in 1916. However, the NRC largely failed to achieve this objective. Itsfailure, and the failure of other policies to instil a strong R&D traditionin Canadian industry, is often attributed to the country’s relatively highrates of foreign direct investment.18 This explanation is weak, however,since several studies have shown that Canadian subsidiaries have tended toinvest proportionately as much or more in R&D in Canada as comparableCanadian-owned companies.19 More likely explanations point to policychoices and behaviours embedded in industry, state institutions, and theacademy.

Canadian universities are among the most autonomous in the world.20

For science and engineering faculties, this culture of autonomy developedin the years following the Second World War, when the NRC assumedresponsibility for distributing Federal funds to university researchers. Mostadvanced capitalist countries accepted the fashionable linear view of therelationship between science and technology, with its popular assump-tion that unfettered science would eventually result in useful products.However, during the postwar decades, the absence of directive nationalpolicies for science and higher education in Canada created a particularlyhospitable space for academic research.

In 1977, Canada’s traditions of academic autonomy were fundament-ally changed. In that year, the granting agencies, including the NRC, theMedical Research Council (established 1960), and the Canada Council(established 1957), were restructured to create a system of Federal researchcouncils encompassing all the disciplines recognized by the Canadianuniversities. In the following year, three councils – the Medical ResearchCouncil (MRC), the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council

18 John Britton and James Gilmour, The Weakest Link. A Technological Perspectiveon Canadian Industrial Underdevelopment (Ottawa: Science Council of Canada, 1978);Meric Gertler, ‘Capital, Technological Change and Regional Growth’, in John Britton (ed.),Canada and the Global Economy (Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queen’s UniversityPress, 1996).

19 A Science Policy for Canada. Report of the Senate Special Committee on SciencePolicy. Chair: Maurice Lamontagne, P.C., three vols., vol. 1: A Critical Review: Past andPresent (Ottawa: Queen’s Printer for Canada, 1970), 147. See also Table II in this article.

20 A comparative study of Australia, Britain, Canada and the USA argued that Canada’sacademic researchers had the most freedom to set their agendas and were the least involvedin activities targeted toward commercial or industrial applications. See Sheila Slaughterand Larry Leslie, Academic Capitalism. Politics, Policies and the Entrepreneurial Univer-sity (Baltimore and London: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1997), 12–13.


of Canada (NSERC), and the Social Sciences and Humanities ResearchCouncil of Canada (SSHRC) – were assigned to support faculty andgraduate student research. The councils were subject to government scru-tiny from the beginning, but managed to maintain a high level of autonomy.However, with the election of the Progressive Conservative government in1984, and the consequent shift to the ‘new right’, this autonomy becametenuous.

The new administration wanted to develop Canada’s science, techno-logy and human resources in support of international competitiveness. In1986, the Federal government launched a matching funds policy for thegranting councils, and an accompanying five-year financial plan. The planmade it clear that the councils were to work in partnership with the privatesector in efforts to increase the level of university–industry collaborativeactivities.21 The Federal and provincial governments announced the broadoutlines of Canada’s first formal science policy in December 1986; thesewere formalized in March 1987 as part of the InnovAction strategy.22

In late 1987, some 600 delegates, representing a cross-section ofCanadian society holding a stake in the country’s universities and colleges,met at a National Forum on Post-Secondary Education co-sponsored bythe Federal and provincial governments.23 Delegates proposed centres ofexcellence that would emphasize interdisciplinarity and involve networksof researchers representing institutions across Canada. In 1988, theScience Council of Canada told the government that prosperity dependedupon integrating the university with the marketplace.24 Reinforcing thistheme, the Prime Minister’s National Advisory Board on Science andTechnology argued that the Canadian universities did not adequately

21 These goals were part of the ideologically driven reform (‘new public management’)of public sector institutions observed in OECD countries generally at this time.

22 InnovAction: The Canadian Strategy for Science and Technology, Government ofCanada, 1987.

23 Invitations were sent to representatives from universities and colleges (30 per cent);employers and users of research (25 per cent); labour and employee organizations (10 percent); Federal and provincial governments (15 per cent); non-government organizationsand special interest groups (first nations groups, visible minorities, student groups, etc.)(15 per cent); and the general public (5 per cent). Proceedings. National Forum on Post-Secondary Education, Saskatoon, 25–28 October, 1987 (Halifax: Institute for Research onPublic Policy, 1987), 5.

24 Science Council of Canada, Winning in a World Economy: University–Industry Inter-action and Economic Renewal in Canada (Ottawa: Minister of Supply and Services, 1988).The Science Council of Canada, established in 1966 to provide independent advice on theformulation and implementation of Federal science policy, was abolished in 1992 as partof a massive restructuring of the country’s R&D system.


exploit intellectual property; and recommended that ‘greater emphasisbe given to funding generic pre-competitive research collaboration byuniversity–industry in research consortia’.25 This complex of initiativesand recommendations helped to ‘backfill’ the January 1988 decision tolaunch networks of centres of excellence, partnered with industry.

With the election of a Liberal government in 1993, the instrumentalemphasis increased. Reducing the deficit was paramount. Programmeswere cut. Those remaining had to return ‘value for money’ and contributeto wealth creation. The Department of Industry, Science, and Techno-logy Canada was reorganized, and by renaming the new departmentsimply, Industry Canada, the new government signalled that sciencewas to be in the service of the economy. Industry Canada assumed anenlarged portfolio and a mandate to foster Canada’s competitiveness.After a major programme review and months of consultation, the Liberalgovernment’s science and technology policy was announced in March1996.26 A ‘national systems of innovation’ approach integrated academy,industry and government research under the rubric of job creation andeconomic growth.27 However, at the same time, policies to reduce thedeficit produced budget cuts in the research councils and reduced fundingfor science and technology initiatives. Thereafter, and until recently, theonly growth areas of university research funding have been private sectorcontributions and government programmes targeting academy/industrycollaboration.

Overturning a fragmented science-policy history, both Conservativeand Liberal administrations have in the last decade crafted a climateof commercialization by applying a multitude of mutually reinforcingpolicy instruments. Their efforts to drive science to the market have beensuccessful. Industrial support of university research appears to be advan-cing more rapidly in Canada than elsewhere. Table I shows that whilethe proportion of industry funding for university research increased in

25 National Advisory Board on Science and Technology, Report by the UniversityCommittee (Ottawa: Government of Canada, 1988), 76. Established in 1987 by theMulroney administration to advise the prime minister on national science and technologygoals, the NABST consisted of 20 members representing university, industry, labour andgovernment interests. Under the Liberal government of Jean Chretien the NABST wasreplaced with the Advisory Council on Science and Technology, a body of twelve expertsrepresenting industry and the scientific community.

26 Industry Canada, Science and Technology for the New Century: A Federal Strategy(Ottawa: Government of Canada, 1996).

27 Richard Nelson, The Sources of Economic Growth (Cambridge, Mass.: HarvardUniversity Press, 1996).


TABLE I

Share of University Research funded by Industry(%) in 1996, 1990, and 1985

1996 1990 1985

Canada 10.4 6.3 4.3

United States 5.8 4.7 3.8

Japan 2.4 2.3 1.5

France 3.3 4.9 1.9

Germany 7.9 7.8 5.9

Italy 4.7 2.4 1.5

United Kingdom 6.2 7.6 5.2

Source: Science, Technology, and Industry Outlook(Paris: OECD, 1998), 165.

TABLE II

Percentage of R&D Expenditures by Financing and Performing Sectors for the G7Nations in 1996

Financing sector Performing sector

Domestic Foreign Gov’t Other Business Gov’t Univs

Business Business Internal

Canada 48.2 12.7 33.7 5.4 62.2 14.9 21.7

US 61.4 0.0 34.6 4.0 72.7 9.8 14.6

Japan 72.3 0.1 20.9 6.7 70.3 10.4 14.5

France 48.3 8.0 42.3 1.3 61.5 20.4 16.8

Germany 60.8 1.9 37.9 0.3 66.3 18.1 15.6

Italy 49.5 4.4 46.2 0.0 57.7 19.9 22.4

UK 48.0 14.3 33.3 4.3 65.5 14.5 18.8

Source: Science, Technology, and Industry Outlook (Paris: OECD, 1998), 166.

all G7 countries from 1985 to 1996, Canada’s proportion in 1996 wassignificantly higher than that of other G7 nations.

By separating funding and performance sectors, Table II shows thatin 1996 Canadian universities performed a higher percentage of nationalR&D than all other G7 countries, with the exception of Italy. However,the Canadian business sector remains a low performer, suggesting that


Canada’s industries continue to rely upon publicly supported researchrather than develop their own infrastructure. The Federal government haspromoted this tendency by providing the most favourable tax regime forinvestment in public R&D of any country among the G7.

THE EVOLUTION OF NCE POLICY

NCE Precursors and Policy Formulation

Perhaps Canada’s most enduring example of a state–academy–industryalliance is the Pulp and Paper Research Institute of Canada (Paprican),founded in 1925 at McGill University, and based on linkages made bythe Federal government’s Forest Products Laboratory (founded in 1913).28

Another enduring initiative is the Industrial Research Assistance Program(IRAP). Launched in the 1960s, IRAP was one of the first Federalattempts to sponsor a collaborative R&D culture. However, most collab-orative networks began during the high tide of neo-liberalism that markedthe policy climate of the 1980s. During this time, according to JorgeNiosi,29 provincial and Federal governments launched over one hundrednew inter-sectoral research collaborations.30

Despite these initiatives, the model chosen for the NCE programmewas non-governmental – the Canadian Institute for Advanced Research

28 Corporate–Higher Education Forum, From Patrons to Partners: Corporate Supportfor Universities (Montreal: Corporate–Higher Education Forum, 1987), 45–46.

29 Jorge Niosi, Flexible Innovation: Technological Alliances in Canadian Industry(Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1995), 34–35.

30 At the provincial level, Quebec’s Programmme d’actions structurantes started in1984–1985 with forty networks of university and government laboratories. Ontario’s eightCentres of Excellence were established in 1986. In 1987, Quebec pioneered the Centred’initiative technologique de Montreal (CITEC) at McGill University. At the Federallevel, the Department of Regional Industrial Expansion merged with the Department ofScience and Technology in 1984 to form Industry, Science, and Technology Canada (ISTC;subsequently Industry Canada). The new department emphasized industrial partnershipsand collaborations. Both NSERC and MRC have actively supported collaborative targetedresearch, carried out through academy–industry–state partnerships. The opportunities forSSHRC have been less pronounced. NSERC started to fund ‘big science’ networks in theearly 1980s – in the earth sciences (Lithoprobe) and in integrated circuit design (CanadianMicroelectronics Corporation). During 1987/88, the budget year prior to the establishmentof the NCE, 15 per cent of NSERC’s total budget went to targeted research. For furtherdiscussion see Robert S. Friedman and Renee C. Friedman, ‘The Canadian Universitiesand the Promotion of Economic Development’, Minerva 28 (3), (1990), 272–293.


(CIAR).31 The CIAR was designed as a ‘university without walls’, linkingresearchers across the country in virtual networks. The purpose wasfundamental inquiry; and industry was viewed as ‘a user of the know-ledge generated, rather than a collaborative partner’.32 Corporate donationswere accepted along with public funding, but neither drove the researchprogramme.

To convert CIAR’s model of basic-science networks into the NCEmodel of strategic-science networks, the government took a series ofsteps.33 First, in 1986, came Ontario’s Centres of Excellence (COE)programme. There was concern that Ontario could become a vortex,attracting all the best scientists across the country. Accordingly, scientistsand policy makers lobbied the Federal government to set up a nationalprogramme. Ottawa was receptive, viewing Ontario’s COEs as a possiblethreat to regional balance. The idea of creating virtual CIAR-type networks– rather than ‘fixed’ COE-type centres – was especially attractive, ‘becausethere just wasn’t enough money to create dozens of new centres around thecountry.’34

During the summer and autumn of 1987, the Federal bureaucracy wasawash with rumours of a major shake-up in research funding. On 13January 1988, the Prime Minister confirmed these, announcing his inten-tion ‘to establish networks of researchers and scientists across the countryto conduct world-class research in areas crucial to Canada’s long-termcompetitiveness’.35 The networks were to be part of the wide-rangingscience and technology initiatives proposed under the new InnovActionpolicy. According to a key informant, the prime minister’s announce-ment came ‘out of the blue and without any consultation’.36 Specifically,the three granting councils responsible for university research were notconsulted.37

31 CIAR was created in 1982 by Fraser Mustard, a distinguished medical scientist andpolicy actor. Prior to the NCE, this model was utilized by the Ontario Centres of Excellenceprogramme.

32 Policy Adviser, First Interview, 10 October 1999, 1.33 Policy Adviser, First Interview, 10 October 1999, 2.34 Civil Servant, Third Interview, 4 October 1999, 4.35 Brian Mulroney, cited in ARA Consulting Group Inc., Evaluation of the Networks of

Centres of Excellence Program, Final Report, prepared for the NCE Program EvaluationCommittee (n.p., January 1997), 9.

36 Program Officer, 2 October 1999, 2.37 J.W. Pullen, Centres of Excellence, report prepared by the Canadian Centre for

Management Development. Government catalogue no. SC93-2/2-1990E (Ottawa: Ministerof Supply and Services Canada, 1990).


Territorial Battles and Programme Design

The research councils realized that they would be marginalized if theNCE initiative were implemented without their input. The three councilpresidents forged an alliance. The president of NSERC assigned two staffmembers to observe how the Prime Minister’s Office was handling thenew programme and instructed his staff to develop alternative plans.38 Asenior NSERC administrator interviewed the consultant hired to developthe programme and concluded that the objectives would be impossible toimplement. There were too many criteria, often with conflicting goals.39

Moreover, research applications were to be reviewed by public servants,with final decisions made by the Ministry, and no peer review would takeplace.40 This point became the councils’ target.41 They argued that peer-review was essential to the programme’s credibility, and insisted that thecouncils were the only bodies having the expertise to run competitions andadminister research funding. Without their endorsement and involvement,they suggested, the NCE programme would receive a chilly reception inthe academic community. For the programme to succeed, the Ministrycould not be allowed to control it.

In May 1988, a compromise was struck. The peer review process wouldbe used strategically. By cloaking the programme in the ‘objectivity’ ofscientific standards, including peer review, it could be protected from polit-ical pressures. This separation was then used to rhetorical advantage bythe government. The Prime Minister’s Office announced that the threeresearch councils would run the NCE competition and distribute thefunds, while Industry Canada would provide the secretariat. The researchcouncil presidents and the deputy minister of industry formed a steeringcommittee, while Industry Canada retained overall control, albeit ‘from adistance’.42 The three presidents exercised considerable political leverageon the steering committee, because Industry Canada had no experiencewith research management in universities.43 They also influenced the

38 Ibid.39 Programme Officer, First Interview, 4 October 1999, 3.40 Programme Officer, First Interview, 4 October 1999, 4.41 Information on the councils’ strategies is based on a synthesis of interviewee

comments. See also Pullen, Centres of Excellence, op. cit., note 37.42 As an interviewee noted, Industry Canada ‘holds the pen’ when writing memoranda to

cabinet or making submissions to the Treasury Board and is also ‘closer to the centre’ thanthe arm’s-length granting councils (Program Officer, First interview, 5 October 1999, 18).Further, NSERC and SSHRC fall within the Industry Canada portfolio and the Minister ofIndustry’s sphere of responsibility.

43 Programme Officer, First interview, 5 October 1999, 18.


direction of intellectual inquiry, identifying targeted areas where theyperceived a research gap.

The intention of NCE policy was to reshape the culture of academicscience around the dual goals of understanding and utility. In languagereminiscent of Pasteur’s Quadrant, an informant explains that

[t]he strategy was to be pregnant – we needed pure, long-term applied science that wassomewhat guided by the needs of industry . . . Everyone was grappling with the term‘pure, long-term applied science.’ [It] was used to walk the fine line separating scienceand application.44

The programme attracted diverse support. On the one hand, it was sold toCabinet as a regional economic development package. On the other, it waspromoted to scientists as an elitist strategy for producing the best science.In fact, according to one interviewee, it was neither, but was merely ameans to pull together teams of the best researchers who, by example,would ideally pull the rest forward.45 The nomenclature of ‘excellence’facilitated the process ‘of capturing some of the best researchers inthe country [and] recruiting them as champions for change within thesystem’.46

Yet, the programme was intended to reach beyond conventionaldemarcations of excellence, ‘to bring in the whole concept of researchmanagement and cross-disciplinarity’.47 Programme design was muchinfluenced by the Mode 1/Mode 2 theory of knowledge productiondeveloped by Michael Gibbons and his colleagues in the late 1980s and1990s.48 Gibbons served as a science policy advisor to Industry Canadaduring this period, and sat on the NCE selection committees. According toone informant, he was their acknowledged ‘guru’.49 The goal of the NCEprogramme was to facilitate Mode 2 networks.50

The Advisory Committee appointed in June 1988 to implement theprogramme developed four selection criteria. The weighting reflected the

44 Policy Adviser, First Interview, 1 October 1999, 2–3.45 Policy Adviser, First Interview, 1 October 1999, 1.46 Civil Servant, Third Interview, 4 October 1999, 8.47 Programme Officer, 18 October 1999, 22.48 Michael Gibbons, Camille Limoges, Helga Nowotny, Simon Schwartzman, Peter

Scott, and Martin Trow, The New Production of Knowledge. The Dynamics of Scienceand Research in Contemporary Societies (London, Thousand Oaks, New Delhi: Sage,1994); Michael Gibbons, Higher Education Relevance in the 21st Century (Paris: TheWorld Bank/UNESCO, 1998).

49 Programme Officer, 18 October 1999, 13.50 Programme Officer, 5 October 1999, 27.


success of the research councils in capturing the initiative. Scientific excel-lence, and the people involved, were weighted at 50 per cent; and a‘coherent, focused programme of research’ was expected.51 The balanceof the weighting was allocated to Industry Canada’s concerns – indus-trial relevance (20 per cent), linkages and networking (20 per cent), andadministrative and management capability (10 per cent).

In November 1988, 158 formal applications were forwarded for assess-ment to an International Peer Review Committee (IPRC) comprisingfirst-ranked scientists, engineers and social scientists, mostly from theUSA and Europe.52 The IPRC reported to the Advisory Committee in June1989.53 Sixteen applications were deemed worthy of funding, nine in the‘must be funded’ category and seven in the ‘recommended for funding’second tier. The Advisory Committee endorsed all nine first-tier networksbut, for reasons that remain unclear, would not support two of the secondtier networks. One of these, on ageing, was the only social science proposalon the short list. After extensive lobbying by the councils, ‘a decision camefrom above’ to include the ageing network.54 However, it would be fundedby the research councils rather than the NCE. The poor showing of thesocial sciences was later attributed to the fact that selection criteria wereoriented toward engineering and the hard sciences, rather than towards ‘thebroad perspective needed to make the participation of human scientistspossible.’55

Because they reflected a compromise, the initial selection criteriafailed to articulate fully the preferences of either the research councilsor of Industry Canada. In practice, networking and industrial relevancescarcely figured into the equation. And because companies made few cashcommitments at the proposal stage, it was difficult to assess the extent ofpartnerships and linkages.56 An interviewee suggests that it was impossibleto expect academics inexperienced in these matters to demonstrate suchcompetencies. For similar reasons, the applications were weak in defining

51 Inter-Council Program Directorate, Networks of Centres of Excellence, List of Appli-cations (Ottawa: Government of Canada, 1988), 1.

52 From some 240 letters of intent.53 As previously stipulated by the research councils, the report was made public.

Public disclosure gave some assurance that the decisions were made in accordance withestablished scientific criteria and were not politically influenced.

54 Policy Adviser, First Interview, 1 October 1999.55 Programme Officer, 2 October 1999.56 Programme Officer, First Interview, 4 October 1999, 6.


proposed management structures. Furthermore, the reviewers themselveswere not skilled in assessing this area.57 Reviewers

could not bring themselves to say ‘no’ to the best science regardless of the other criteria.They could not displace top quality science with inferior science just because they had abetter management structure or because they scored so high on practical application. Theother three criteria were ephemeral, intangible, hard to measure or understand. [Reviewers]could not bring themselves to knock out top science on the basis of criteria they did notunderstand and could not operationalize.58

In the end, the reviewers decided to ‘gamble on the best [science] and. . . hope that [the rest] happens’.59

Mobilizing Networks: Changing Attitudes

At a November 1989 briefing session for the winning networks, StuartSmith, chair of the IPRC and of the Implementation Committee, arguedthat the NCE programme introduced ‘two radical and important’ hypo-theses.60 The first would test whether collaborative research could be doneat a distance using telecommunications technologies. The second wouldtest ‘whether it was possible in the field of long-term and fundamentalresearch to force researchers to think about the economic and social impactof their work, and more particularly about the channels by which theresearch results will be commercialized’.61

Apart from the precursors discussed earlier, there was no operationalmodel for the implementation of NCE policy. The programme was createdfrom whole cloth, with Ottawa and the networks making up and modi-fying rules and expectations as the concepts evolved. It was apparent toprogramme staff that ‘the scientists didn’t know what they were gettinginto’.62 Researchers thought it was just one more funding source for basicscience. ‘They just went into it for the money. Very clearly at the start, itwas just another pot of money with some arbitrary rules that they wouldpretend to follow’.63 One of the tasks of the Directorate, in the early years,

57 Programme Officer, 15 October 1999, 1–2.58 Policy Adviser, 1 October 1999, 3.59 Programme Officer, First Interview, 4 October 1999, 6.60 An eminent scientist and former professor with the Department of Psychiatry,

McMaster University Medical School, Stuart Smith was chair of the Science Council ofCanada in the early 1980s, and later, the founder of a private sector research corporation.

61 Stuart Smith, ‘Address to NCE Participants’, Liaison 1 (1), (January 1990), (InternalNewsletter, NCE Program, Ottawa: NCE Program Directorate).

62 Policy Adviser, 9 November 1999, 24.63 Ibid.


was to convince scientists that their responsibilities extended beyond thestandards of traditional funding programmes, and beyond the norms ofacademic science. The staff had to convey the ‘expectation that [they] weregoing to interact with industry and that there was going to be some kind ofmeasurable outcome from that interaction’.64

This period of developing reflexive self-knowledge consisted oflearning about the nature of networks, how researchers should interact, andthe industrial environment in Canada.65 Industrial partnerships at this stagewere slow in coming. ‘There was a lot of courting in Phase I and not a lotof commitment’, but this courtship built awareness of ‘what the industrieswere interested in and what basic science could do for them’.66 Collabor-ation among the academics themselves, however, really took root duringthis phase, with ‘a positive shift in the attitudes of the network researcherstoward interdisciplinary and intersectoral research collaboration’.67

When a Liberal government took office in 1993, the future of the NCEsbecame uncertain. The new government was committed to reducing thedeficit. The budgets of the funding councils were cut and the programmewas threatened. But the networks came together, as a meta-network, tolobby for continuation. The programme was renewed for another fouryears (Phase II, 1994–1998), because of its ‘important contribution tochanging the research culture in Canada’.68 A reduced budget of $197million was allocated for the four-year period, with 25 per cent set asidefor developing new networks. Modified selection criteria reflected the newfiscal climate. Scientific excellence was ‘demoted’ to the same weight asthe other criteria. Proposals seeking new or renewed funding had to exceedan established ‘threshold of excellence’ for five equally weighted factors:

• excellence of research programme: 20 per cent (was 50 per cent)• training of highly qualified personnel: 20 per cent (new)• networking and partnerships: 20 per cent (same as before)• knowledge exchange and technology exploitation: 20 per cent (new)• network management: 20 per cent (was 10 per cent).

As an NSERC staff member noted, Industry Canada had successfully‘reorient[ed] the programme to something that they were more comfortablewith’.69 The new criteria reflected what they had wanted from the start: a

64 Programme Officer, Fifth Interview, 4 October 1999, 6.65 Programme Officer, First Interview, 5 October 1999, 10.66 Programme Officer, Fifth Interview, 4 October 1999, 23.67 NCE, Report to the Minister (Ottawa: Steering Committee, November 1993), 5.68 Ibid., 3.69 Programme Officer, Fifth Interview, 4 October 1999, 12.


programme that fostered more industrially relevant research.70 A rotationof research council presidents helped consolidate this position. The newleaders of MRC and NSERC were ‘very much focused on developinguniversity–industry linkages [and] on having academics work outside oftheir traditional environments for interaction’.71 The attitude of academicstaff was more ambivalent. The top-down decision to shift priorities repres-ented ‘a very serious concern for [some of] the researchers involved,’72

and there was considerable turnover among scientists. Some found theprogramme more appealing and enlisted; others ‘knew this wasn’t theplace for them [and] got out’.73 However, relatively few researchers balked,perhaps because funding increases to fundamental research forestalledopposition,74 or because there had been so many other changes in the spaceof four years that resistance had dissipated.75

Since Phase II, all networks have conducted more applied and lessfundamental research. Reduced budgets for the renewed networks haveforced scientists to ‘focus much more on . . . lines of research that werelikely to be of interest to industry’.76 In line with Pasteur’s Quadrant,the research still had basic components, but was aligned ‘to be of greaterinterest to the existing industrial environment’.77 The Phase III competitionwas initiated in 1997. While the Phase II criteria remained substantiallyintact, the supporting rhetoric reflected a more relaxed fiscal climate; socialas well as economic concerns were encompassed. As the NCE programmeevolved, therefore, the selection criteria reflected the shifting interests andpriorities of policy and participants.

The Dialectics of Network Management

The history of the NCE has been described as ‘the evolution from freeresearch to managed research to industrial participation’.78 In the earlyyears, each network was free to develop its own organizational style andstructure. The NCE Directorate made few demands in this regard because,as one interviewee put it, ‘it was assumed that if the science was excel-

70 Civil Servant, Third Interview, 4 October 1999, 6.71 Programme Officer, Fifth Interview, 4 October 1999, 17.72 Programme Officer, 18 October 1999, 9.73 Programme Officer, First Interview, 5 October 1999, 9.74 Policy Adviser, Second Interview, 1 October 1999, 1.75 Programme Officer, Fifth Interview, 4 October 1999, 14.76 Programme Officer, First Interview, 5 October 1999, 10.77 Ibid.78 Programme Officer, First Interview, 4 October 1999, 13.


lent, all other factors would fall into place’.79 As the programme maturedand its purposes evolved, the Directorate came to realize that manage-ment expertise ‘makes or breaks the networks’ and is ‘as important as theexcellence [of the science]’.80

These structural changes are reminiscent of organizational and mana-gerial innovations implemented in the late 1870s by the German dyemanufacturing industry.81 The industry’s goal of producing commerciallyrelevant scientific discoveries on a systematic basis resulted in increaseddivision of labour, scientific specialization, and cooperative work struc-tures. As ‘[c]ooperative research in a bureaucratic structure involved prob-lems’, Georg Meyer-Thurow observes, ‘the ability to cooperate becameas important as scientific competence’ when recruitment policies weredesigned in the 1890s.82

The organization of the NCE networks are characterized by somestandard features. All networks must have a board of directors, a scientificcommittee to organize the research programme, and a management team.83

All organizational structures must be approved by the NCE SteeringCommittee. The NCE Directorate recommends that networks hire special-ists in technology transfer, marketing and communications as required.But the two core, dedicated positions are scientific director and networkmanager. Ideally the scientific director coordinates the science and inte-grates the research projects, while the network manager focuses onbudgets, graduate students, industrial contacts, and reporting.

The decision to make network management a criterion of equal value inPhase II rested upon Industry Canada’s concern ‘that too much emphasishad been put on scientific excellence and not enough on application’.In other words, without formal management, it was far too easy for thenetworks to operate in a fragmented fashion, ‘where everybody did more

79 Programme Officer, 1 November 1999.80 Programme Officer, Second Interview, 6 October 1999, 3.81 Georg Meyer-Thurow, ‘The Industrialization of Invention: A Case Study from the

German Chemical Industry’, Isis 73 (1982), 363–381.82 Ibid., 377.83 Information on organizational patterns is based on a synthesis of interviewee

comments and NCE documents: NCE, Program Evaluation Assessment, Final Report(Ottawa: Program Evaluation Steering Committee, June 1992); NCE, Report to theMinister (Ottawa: Steering Committee, November 1993), 14; ARA Consulting Group Inc.,Evaluation of the Networks of Centres of Excellence Program, Final Report, Prepared forthe NCE Program Evaluation Committee (n.p., January 1997), 19–48; NCE, Report of theSelection Committee, Phase II (Ottawa: Selection Committee, January 1994), appendix 6;NCE, Selection Committee Report (Ottawa: Selection Committee, September 1997), 23.


or less what they wished to do’.84 For one participant, management wasthe key feature that distinguished network research from academic science.‘The major novelty of the NCE [was that it brought] large-scale managedresearch into academia . . . and this has come as a shock to many. Perhapsit has been the first culture shock.’85 This informant defined the changes interms suggesting the industrialization of science and the proletarianizationof the scientist:

To me it’s not just a triangle, government–academia–industry, but it is the introduction ofa management structure, making it more . . . industrial . . . in the sense that the academic. . . was no longer his or her own boss and part of his or her own research.86

But another participant suggested that NCEs were simply ‘slightly moremanaged or administered’ than usual.87 In this conception, managersoccupy the boundary between public and private, doing the paperworkrequired by government departments, university administrators and otherstakeholders,88 ‘knocking on doors to try to get partners’,89 or otherwisefreeing researchers from tasks that diminish their productivity.

The NCE Directorate encouraged managers to include their partners atall levels of the network. Partnerships were defined as ‘any involvement ofoutside bodies in the network.’90 Divergent definitions of ‘partner’ reflectthe different forms of collaboration each sector requires. Most often, part-nership included board or committee membership, joint research projects,or acting in an advisory capacity. Network boards of directors were struc-tured to emphasize the integration of partners in research management.91

All network boards included voting representatives from industry as wellas from university administration and the network’s principal investigators.Furthermore, most networks appointed industry partners to the committeesthat set research and training priorities.

The Directorate takes a prescriptive stance on partnerships only whenformal network agreements are being negotiated – in effect, statingthat partners should be rewarded in proportion to their contribution tothe network. ‘In other words . . . if they are contributing a significantamount of cash, then . . . first right of access to intellectual property

84 Programme Officer, First Interview, 6 October 1999, 10.85 Programme Officer, First Interview, 4 October 1999, 9.86 Ibid.87 Civil Servant, Third Interview, 4 October 1999, 14.88 Ibid.89 Programme Officer, Second Interview, 6 October 1999, 5.90 Programme Officer, Fifth Interview, 4 October 1999, 19–20.91 Programme Officer, Third Interview, 6 October 1999, 10.


may be a consideration.’92 Sectoral differences influence intellectual prop-erty arrangements. In the life sciences, for example, early patents andexclusive licences are the norm, while in microelectronics, telecommu-nications and information technology, early access to information is thekey criterion. ‘So the sectoral differences [are] one of the key elementsof the programme. We have tried to maintain a high degree of flexibilityso that the sectoral differences can be accommodated and that we are notpushing people into directions that are uncomfortable or inappropriate fortheir type of research.’93

In recent years, many of the networks have formally incorporated tofacilitate the management of their extensive research programmes, intel-lectual property portfolios and partnerships. Incorporation was alwaysIndustry Canada’s preference. They saw formal, legal structure as a meansof eliminating the model of collegial governance that had guided academicdecision making in the past.94 But the research councils resisted, prefer-ring to leave the decision up to the individual networks. After initiallyadopting a ‘wait and see’ position, most have now incorporated. They havealso created arms-length, for-profit corporations that use standard businesstools such as mission statements and strategic plans.

Over the years, the NCE Directorate has constructed exacting financialand statistical reporting requirements for network managers – ‘a very, verycomplex performance measurement system’.95 Although the system hasbeen refined, many remain dubious about the effectiveness of such bureau-cratic overload, where the quantity of reporting seems to take precedenceover real accountability. Importantly, the Directorate has imposed no auditrequirement. As long as reports were correctly submitted, there was littlein the way of checks on content. In late 2000, however, the Directoratecorrected this anomaly, announcing the implementation of an independentaudit requirement for network reports.

Two major external reviews of the NCE have been commissioned.During 1996 the entire programme was evaluated by the ARA ConsultingGroup Inc. The ARA evaluation sought to calculate the benefit/cost ratioof the Federal government’s investment in the NCE programme, andconcluded it was positive.96 In 1999, Groupe Secours conducted a review

92 Programme Officer, Fifth Interview, 4 October 1999, 19-20.93 Ibid.94 Programme Officer, First Interview, 4 October 1999, 8.95 Policy Adviser, 9 November 1999, 4.96 ARA Consulting Group Inc., Evaluation of the Networks of Centres of Excellence

Program, report prepared for the NCE Program Evaluation Committee (Ottawa: NCEProgram Directorate, 1997).


of ‘best practices’ in network management. The review was completed in2000 and is currently under consideration by the Steering Committee.

Reconstructing Culture

One of the intentions of the NCE initiative was to generate cultural changein academic science – first, by enticing researchers out of their ivory towersand into the ‘national system of innovation,’ and second, by laying thefoundation for a national research capacity that did not need extensiveFederal infrastructure investment. The programme’s biggest achievement,according to one interviewee, has been to establish a market orientationin academic researchers and a predisposition for collaborating with theprivate sector.97 While the scientists may have begun with a fairly tradi-tional attitude and some scepticism toward the network concept, theseviews are said to have changed over time.

[The scientists] very clearly got swept up in it. And not just on the commercial side ofcourse. They were doing great research and discovering genes and all the rest of it. Honours[we]re being heaped upon them. [There was a] Nobel Prize . . . , [I]t started becoming veryprestigious.98

From the onset of Phase II (1994/95), the Directorate started to emphasizethe evolution of a commercial culture and the responsibility of networks fortechnology transfer. This included finding and developing receptor capa-city in Canadian industry, securing venture capital, negotiating multipartyintellectual property agreements, and establishing an effective processwhereby network technologies could be licensed to industrial partners.Significant increases were expected in the numbers of patents filed andinventions disclosed.99 Around this time, the networks began to take ona ‘life of their own’ as they claimed increasing autonomy.100 As two keyparticipants put it:

Probably around the mid-90s we started to see change where the people who were workingin the programme had a very strong concept of what it was that they were doing. It wasn’talways exactly the same as our concept, but they began to drive the programme in certainways.101

97 Programme Officer, First Interview, 6 October 1999, 6.98 Policy Adviser, 9 November 1999, 24.99 In some fields, however, patenting and licensing are not the normal routes for techno-

logy transfer; dissemination occurs instead through traditional routes, such as training andconference presentations.100 Programme Officer, 15 October 1999, 11.101 Programme Officer, Fifth Interview, 4 October 1999, 29.


We [government] still set the agenda, but the level of contribution is much higher fromthe networks and I would say that many times now we are learning from them as opposedto them learning from us . . . [I]n the mid-90s we started to see a change from us reallydriving the programme to them taking much more ownership for it and starting to push intonew directions.102

Sophisticated alliances with the private sector allowed the networksto attain experiential knowledge of business and finance that surpassedthat of Directorate staff. They knew what was needed to run their ownprogrammes, and felt constrained by the pedestrian advice of NCE offi-cials. In turn, the NCE Directorate became somewhat uneasy with theaggressive commercial ethos that developed in some networks. The Direc-torate sensed that things had gone too far. In its Phase III (1997) reviewof one of the life science networks, for example, the NCE SelectionCommittee suggested that the research programme should be ‘directed togoals that are appropriate in an academic setting’.103 In other words, thenetwork ‘should not try to compete in areas of research where major phar-maceutical companies are already investing enormous amounts of moneyand have a clear research lead and advantage’.104 Thus, the norms, valuesand habits of some members of the academic community have shiftedbeyond the boundaries conceived by the system builders.

In February 1997, the Federal government announced its decision tomake the NCE permanent. At the same time, they capped funding forindividual networks at a maximum of fourteen years. This would allowthe programme to continuously reinvent itself through a constant influx ofnew people and ideas.105 The intent was to cull the networks least likely tosurvive without government support, and to discontinue funding to thosedeemed to have ‘graduated’ from the programme. Policy makers did notwant NCEs to become entrenched and institutionalized. They intended toinstil an orientation towards the future among researchers, ‘setting themup from the very beginning with a vision of life after NCE funding’.106

102 Ibid., 30.103 NCE, Report of the Selection Committee (Ottawa: NCE Program Directorate,September 1997).104 Ibid.105 Programme Officer, First Interview, 5 October 1999, 11.106 Programme Officer, 15 October 1999, 11–12.


DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSIONS

The NCE is one of the flagship initiatives in a Federal policy frameworkpromoting the commercialization of academic science and academy–industry partnerships. Since 1989, the NCE has established a system ofnational networks – ‘research institutes without walls’ – to target anddevelop commercial opportunities, and transfer them to the private sectorfor exploitation. The emphasis is on translating university research resultsinto marketable technologies as quickly as possible, in order to enhanceCanada’s competitiveness in a global ‘knowledge-based economy’.

Project-based network science defies former distinctions between‘basic’ and ‘applied’. Indeed, it seems to fit comfortably within whatStokes has described as ‘Pasteur’s Quadrant’, where research is dedicatedto both understanding and use, in contrast to ‘Bohr’s Quadrant’ whereresearch only advances understanding, and ‘Edison’s Quadrant’ whichsearches only for utility.107 In terms of the ‘Mode 1/Mode 2’ typologycoined by Gibbons and colleagues, Phase I networks seem more akin tothe traditional monodisciplinary model of Mode 1 academic science.108

Later networks, particularly those funded from Phase III on, seem to carrymany of the attributes Gibbons attaches to Mode 2. They are transdiscip-linary, for example, and focus upon the context of application. If ‘Mode 1’is analogous to ‘Bohr’s Quadrant’, ‘Mode 2’ clearly falls into ‘Edison’sQuadrant’. In Gibbons’s typology, perhaps to its detriment, there is noroom for a ‘Mode 3’ or ‘Pasteur’s Quadrant’.

The NCE is an ideological instrument. Its ideological goals have neverbeen hidden: its purpose is to change the research culture. Programmedocuments convey a sense that the country can no longer afford researcherswho isolate themselves in the academy, pursuing esoteric problems atpublic expense. Instead, academic researchers must be enlisted in the‘national system of innovation’ and encouraged to apply their talents tomore immediate ends. ‘The thrust of the NCE programme is to ensure thatknowledge is transferred from the generators to the users and applied tobenefit the lives of Canadians.’109

From the beginning of the NCE there was tension between the worldof ‘policy’, represented by government, and the world of ‘science’,

107 Stokes, Pasteur’s Quadrant: Basic Science and Technological Innovation, op. cit.,note 11.108 Gibbons, et al. The New Production of Knowledge, op. cit., note 48; Gibbons, HigherEducation Relevance in the 21st Century, op. cit., note 48.109 NCE Program, Annual Report, 1996–1997.


represented by researchers and research council officers. Industry Canadapressed for an emphasis upon utility and application while the grantingcouncil presidents and the appointed scientists held onto basic science andknowledge for its own sake. Industry Canada wanted to privilege capitaland private ownership while the granting councils wanted to privilegeacademic freedom, believing this would serve the ‘public good’. In thefirst phase, the ‘basic’ conception prevailed as the councils captured theprogramme and instituted peer reviews. The process was transparent andscientific excellence the essential criterion. The definition of science wastraditional and thus favoured the natural and medical sciences. The socialscience applications were judged to be inferior.

By the second phase, however, the political climate had changed, andwith it, the research climate. Programmes were being cut to reduce thedeficit. Public sector reform was in the air. No matter how excellent thescience, the NCE could no longer be justified as a funding source forfundamental research. Industry Canada insisted upon the reinstatementof a demonstrated commitment to ‘value-added’ commercial relevance.Thus scientific excellence was brought down to the same weight as theother selection criteria. Furthermore, the culture of the NCE was changingthrough both the second and third phase. Government was successful inpushing the Networks to appoint managers, place industrialists on theirboards and, most important, to become corporate entities.

The NCE programme was designed to change the traditional ethos ofacademic science, and network science was to be a means whereby a smalleconomy could afford ‘big science’. Through the programme, it was hopedthat: (1) people of multiple disciplinary and institutional backgroundswould come together to resolve research problems; (2) research would be‘managed’, in the sense that research committees would steer scientificdirection and terminate dead ends, while professional managers wouldpursue commercial opportunities; and (3) networks would leverage theirintellectual capital by gaining access to their partners’ social, human, andeconomic capital. Network science thus offered the potential for a scaleand scope of investigation an order of magnitude larger than that currentlyavailable from single researchers and small groups. It was ‘a combinationof excellence, networking, partnerships, trying to do more by [connecting]people in the same [research] area across the country’.110

Policy makers gambled that networks would appeal to scientists inpart because of the elitist discourse that underpins these policies, but alsobecause the idea of the ‘invisible college’ has framed the social practice of

110 Programme Officer, First Interview, 4 October 1999, 3.


science for the last three centuries. In this sense we can see a convergenceof interests across government, research administrators, and scientists. Theboundaries between academy/industry, science/policy and basic/appliedare likely more permeable because of NCE. The level of interdisciplinarityand the internalization of network and commercial culture has also beenfurthered through this policy. Government has played a key role in redir-ecting the culture of Canada’s universities towards commercially orientednetwork science.

Yet the changes provide differential benefits. As more externalresources are directed towards elite research programmes in the naturaland medical sciences, more internal resources have to be diverted tosupport them. Universities and hospitals carry a large, and largely unac-knowledged, proportion of the costs of the programme, subsidizing thebulk of the indirect and infrastructure costs, as well as the direct costsof researchers’ salaries and benefits.111 One informant undertook ‘a veryarbitrary . . . cost analysis for the[se] contributions’ and calculated thatthey amounted to ‘the equivalent, at least, of the amount that was comingin from the Federal government’.112

In effect, the universities and hospitals supplied the essential incubationfacilities in which the networks could flourish. If the NCE programmeconveys an overall impression of fiscal prudence, it is largely because ofits ability to distribute the costs of research across space and sector. Theprogramme covers only part of the direct costs of research, amountingto $2–$4 million per network each year. Industry makes only nominalcontributions, despite programme claims to the contrary. Other Federaland provincial government agencies, tax-sheltered disease foundations,and other non-profits underwrite a substantial portion. When all the publiccontributions are calculated,113 it becomes clear that the NCE is built upon‘the strong foundations that were present in the universities as a result offunding from other granting council programmes, and . . . [other] mechan-isms put into place over the years. This wasn’t something that just sprangup overnight.’114

111 Nominally 10 per cent of a researcher’s time is spent on network activities, but it isoften considerably more, owing to board, committee, and leadership commitments.112 Programme Officer, 15 October 1999, 19.113 For an examination of the relative proportions of public and private funding in theNCE programme, see Janet Atkinson-Grosjean, ‘Excellence, Networks, and the Pursuit ofProfit: Academic Science and Public Policy in Canada’, conference paper presented at theSociety for the Social Studies of Science (San Diego, Calif., 1999).114 Programme Officer, 15 October 1999, 20.


ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

We are most grateful for the thoughtful comments made by the Editor andthe referee. An earlier version of this paper was presented at the 4S/EASSTconference, Worlds in Transition: Technoscience, Culture and Citizenshipin the 21st Century, 27–30 September 2000, University of Vienna, Austria.This work was supported by a Social Sciences and Humanities ResearchCouncil of Canada Research Grant (410-98-1577).

ABOUT THE AUTHORS

Donald Fisher is a Professor in the Department of Educational Studiesand Co-director of the Centre for Policy Studies in Higher Education andTraining (CHET) at the University of British Columbia. Before this workon academic–industry relations, he has focused on the history and soci-ology of the social sciences in the United Kingdom, the United States andCanada.

Janet Atkinson-Grosjean, also at UBC, works at the intersection ofscience studies, science and innovation policy, higher education policy,and institutional and organizational sociology. Her dissertation examinesthe public/private divide and ‘post-academic’ science and her field workexamines Canada’s Networks of Centres of Excellence programme. Sheis supported by a fellowship from the Social Sciences and HumanitiesResearch Council of Canada.

Dawn House is interested in the intersection of academic cultures andinstitutions, public accountability in technoscience, and organizationaltrends in advanced capitalism. A PhD student with the InterdisciplinaryGraduate Studies Programme at UBC, her thesis examines the trainingof doctoral and post-doctoral students in networks of biotechnology,information technology and forest management.

Centre for Policy Studies in Higher Education and TrainingFaculty of EducationUniversity of British Columbia2125 Main MallVancouver, BCCanada V6T 1Z4E-mail: [email protected]

changes in academy/industry/state relations in canada: the creation and development of the networks...

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