Abschnittsübersicht

  • In today's class, we will be taking a closer look at universities as locations for innovation and research. We will question our own existence, what we are doing and the point of it all. We will being our lesson with a theoretical justification for the existence of universities and their role in countries' national innovation systems. We will then examine the different types of research and development, as well as how universities contribute to each type. Then we will head to China to visit some of the country's elite institutions. We will discover how much China's system of higher education has changed, what incentives exist for conducting research and the resulting consequences for innovation. We will end today's class with a case of why (maybe) China's fetish for rankings and quantitative targets may lead to adverse outcomes for the country's innovative potential.