The Research Collaboration Paradox: A Tale of Two Governance Narratives in an Australian Innovation Setting

Australian government policy aims to exploit university-industry research collaboration to transform the nation from a 'lucky' country enjoying the riches of agribusiness and resource exploitation, to a 'clever' country, exporting ingenuity and innovation globally. The Cooperative Research Centres (CRC) program has operated for more than a quarter of a century, but successive modifications demonstrate an inherent tension between two governance narratives pertaining to university-industry collaboration. This brief discussion looks at how the gradual privileging of one of these two narratives over time could potentially compromise genuine innovation-producing collaboration. Policy makers therefore need to find ways to reconcile these two narratives.