Enterprise and Society Advance Access published online on October 18, 2007
Enterprise and Society, doi:10.1093/es/khm077
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Converting Academic Expertize into Industrial Innovation: University-based Research at Solvay and Gevaert, 1900–1970
Kenneth Bertrams is Research Associate at the National Fund for Scientific Research (FRS-FNRS) and teaches at the Institute for the Study of Europe of the Université Libre de Bruxelles. Contact Information: Université Libre de Bruxelles, CP 175, 50 av. F.D. Roosevelt, 1050 Brussels, Belgium.
kbertram{at}ulb.ac.be
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.
A first version of this article was presented at the 5th International Conference on the History of Chemistry (Lisbon, September 6–10, 2005). I wish to express my gratitude to Ernst Homburg, Geert Vanpaemel, as well as to the anonymous referees of Enterprise & Society for their useful comments on earlier drafts. I am also most grateful to Laurent Roosens, head of the Gevaert Archives.