ABSTRACT
This chapter looks at the broad picture of research funding by industrial organizations. In addition to conducting their own research, industrial firms sponsor research through industrial consortia, they purchase or sponsor research in independent research institutes, and they purchase or sponsor research in universities. The chapter also looks at the place of industry in the overall research and development (R&D) picture and where the research that industry pays for is actually done. The tradition of industrially funded research in universities is actually an old one. Cardwell describes how the burgeoning textile industry supported research at the University of Manchester in nineteenth-century Britain. One of the unique features of R&D in the United States is the independent or nonprofit research institute. These account for a far greater percentage of research in the United States than in any of the other Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development countries.
