Academic organizations and new industrial fields: Berkeley and Stanford after the rise of biotechnology

Abstract

The increasing intertwining of academic and commercial research networks has led to fundamental changes in the organization of modern science. Industry links not only affect the professional dynamics within individual scholarly communities but also affect the position of these communities in their broader academic environment. This paper outlines how industry ties open up opportunities for scientific institution builders to strengthen the legitimacy of their fields of scientific enquiry within this environment. How an academic environment shapes efforts by institution-builders to pursue these opportunities is examined in the context of reorganizations in the life sciences at the University of California at Berkeley and Stanford University following the rise of biotechnology during the 1980s and 1990s. This study also highlights how different models of technology transfer shaped the organizational structures of the expansionist initiatives pushed through at these two universities by molecular biologists with close industry ties.

Introduction

The world of commerce has gained an ever stronger foothold on American university campuses over the last decades (e.g. Gibbons et al., 1994, Etzkowitz and Leydesdorff, 1998, Slaughter and Leslie, 1997). As studies of key scientific fields such as the life sciences highlight, firms have now become an integral part of scholarly networks within which the creation of scientific knowledge is organized (e.g. Kenney, 1986, Liebeskind et al., 1996, Owen-Smith and Powell, 2004, Owen-Smith et al., 2002). The increasingly strong links between university laboratories and firms have had far-reaching consequences for the institutional landscape in which academic scholars operate.

Apart from altering the day-to-day professional lives of scientists, industry links have had important implications for relationships among scholarly communities within universities. Academic scholarship in modern science is organized in a social order, in which different scholarly communities (e.g. research groups, departments) vie for legitimacy. This study will highlight that the rise of a new science-based industrial field constitutes a disruptive event that provides opportunities for academic institution builders to reshape this social order in their favor. Moreover, this study will examine the mechanisms through which the broader organizational environment, in which a scholarly community is embedded, affects the strategies these institution builders use to pursue the opportunities offered by the rise of new science-based industries.

In no field have the altered dynamics governing the production of scientific knowledge been more apparent than in the biomedical fields opened up by the rise of biotechnology. Fuelling advances in some of the most notable scientific areas to emerge over the last decades such as genome sequencing, stem cell research and molecular medicine, molecular biologists with their close industry ties to biotechnology have been very successful in attracting support for their scientific programs. Over the last decades, many of the most significant infrastructure investments at American university campuses have been investments in molecular biology. Moreover, initiatives by scientific institution builders in molecular biology have been matched by major increases in funding support for the biomedical sciences. For example, congressional appropriations for the National Institutes of Health alone (the key funding agency for basic biomedical research) increased from USD 2.1 Billion in 1975 to USD 29.5 Billion in 2008 (National Institutes of Health, 2008).

In order to better understand the processes that shaped expansions in molecular biology, this study develops a framework to analyze organizational changes at universities. Within this framework scholarly communities in science are seen as socially embedded and organizational outcomes as shaped by struggles over legitimacy among different communities. Zooming in on initiatives led by scholars from two small groups of molecular biologists with close industry ties at the biochemistry departments of the University of California at Berkeley (Berkeley) and Stanford University (Stanford), this study analyzes how these scholars reshaped the local social order governing the life sciences within their universities following the rise of biotechnology.¹

Before the birth of biotechnology, the pursuit of scientific knowledge in various academic communities in biology at Berkeley and Stanford was fragmented. In this environment, molecular biologists tied to these universities’ biochemistry departments, like most other scholarly communities in the biological sciences, were organized around a distinctive, separate scientific program. During the 1960s and 1970s, molecular biologists on both campuses attempted on several occasions to mobilize support around expansionist initiatives that encroached on the scientific territories of other scholarly communities in biology. These initiatives, however, were repeatedly thwarted.

All changed after the advent of biotechnology. The altered frames used to legitimize their scholarly activities allowed molecular biologists within the organizational environment at Berkeley and Stanford to attract support for a number of major, expansionist initiatives. These initiatives significantly extended the control by molecular biologists over scholarly resources on their campuses.

This paper is structured as follows. First, it outlines a framework for conceptualizing processes of organizational adaptation by universities following the rise of new science-based industrial fields. Second, it puts into its historical context, the role played by molecular biologists from Berkeley's and Stanford's biochemistry departments in the emergence of the biotechnology industry in the San Francisco region and discusses why major initiatives led by members of this group constitute an interesting case study. Third, it presents a number of new empirical findings. Fourth, it assesses these findings through the lens of the proposed theoretical framework. Finally, it identifies avenues for further investigation.