ABSTRACT
Universities occupy a central place in the process of knowledge creation and dissemination in the contemporary economy. While the main research role of universities has traditionally been seen as the performance of basic research, they have come under increasing pressure in recent decades to expand this role into additional areas, particularly for the commercialization of research. The changes that have pushed the university system in this direction are part of a broader economic trend that has shifted the site for the performance of basic and applied research away from government and corporate research laboratories towards the university. At issue is the changing nature of the relationship between the universities and the broader innovation system in which they are embedded, as well as the changing nature of the research and development process within large corporations (Geiger and Sá 2008: 34).
