Carnegie Reporter, Vol. 4, No. 1

Working Partnerships in Higher Education, Industry and Innovation:
Financial or Intellectual Imperatives
by Glenda Kruss

Human Sciences Research Council Press

The pressure is on for institutions of higher learning to respond to the demands of the rapidly globalizing knowledge economy. In South Africa the sector is striving to meet social and economic needs by contributing to development, as the capacity to generate, process and apply knowledge to contribute to innovation has become a critical issue. Ideally, collaborative partnerships between higher education and industry would facilitate this process at institutions throughout the country. In reality, fragmentation and inequality characterize many of these relationships, while South African educators and experts find they have more access to information about partnerships in other countries than in their own.

To bridge this knowledge gap, the Human Sciences Research Council, with support from the Carnegie Corporation, undertook a study to determine the extent to which practices of the knowledge economy have begun to penetrate South African higher education and industry. They also explored how national policy and economic imperatives influence the form of partnerships and the degree to which such collaborations, particularly in the three priority areas—information and communication technology, biotechnology and new materials development— are achieving desired goals. The resulting audits, mapping exercises and in-depth case studies reveal much about how policy plays out in practice, in all its complex, messy and difficult to quantify reality.

Statehood and Security: Georgia after the Rose Revolution
Edited by Bruno Coppieters and Robert Legvold
The American Academy of Arts and Sciences
The MIT Press

An ancient land with an uncertain future, Georgia has faced profound threats to its national security since the dramatic triumph of the Rose Revolution in November 2003. From internal conflicts to tensions beyond its borders—including the troubled relationship with Russia—many complex challenges threaten the newly independent state’s regional stability and carry profound international implications. Preserving the country’s territorial integrity is the first objective on Georgia’s security agenda, followed by the shoring up of essential institutions designed to provide security and the attempt to stave off conflict in its immediate neighborhood. But overlaying all these practical concerns is an ancient insecurity born of the history of the Black Sea region, dominated by the rise and fall of empires throughout the millennia.

The fourth in a series of books written with support from Carnegie Corporation, this comprehensive and up-to-date analysis of the strategic importance of Georgian statehood and the broad range of related foreign policy problems includes contributions from the leading regional authorities. Its aim, according to the editors, is threefold: 1) to untangle the interrelated layers of security challenges; 2) to explain why Georgian problems should concern more than their neighbors, meaning major Western powers; and 3) to consider what politically feasible steps to improve the situation can be taken by the people of Georgia and the surrounding region, including Russia, as well as Europe and America.