ABSTRACT
Current scenarios based on market volatility, a changed political climate, economic crises, budget retrenchments, a growing interest for technology transfer, and so on, have led governments in most countries to reorganize public research bodies (PRBs) and universities along the lines of a new public management reform. This chapter analyzes the "strategic changes" and the resulting new morphology of the largest Italian public research body that was brought forth by public management reforms. It describes the main European and US scientific research bodies that provide a basis to analyze the evolutionary changes of public research institutions and investigates strengths and weaknesses, as well as threats and opportunities of their new morphology within the national system of innovation. The recent organizational orientation of research bodies, designed to stimulate technology transfer, technological services of various kinds, and the commercialization of research, is in line with the so-called "academic capitalism" which is also characteristic of universities.
