Since the 1970s the United States has seen the rise of various forms of collaboration among the sectors of government, academia, and industry. These forms include industry-specific inter-firm research consortia, government-industry technology transfer, and university-industry research centers. Yet the emergence of government-university-industry strategic partnerships is relatively recent, and often fostered by specific federal government programs. This new organizational form owes its development to recent trends in the U.S. research environment in industry, academia, and government.

Industrial research is facing pressures to decrease time-to-market for new inventions, and to conduct research aimed at specific, identifiable customer needs. As a result, traditional basic research activities in corporate laboratories have been scaled back. A survey conducted in 1997 by R&D Magazine found that much of this is directed basic research, closely linked to related applied research activities, rather than exploratory basic research aimed at the creation of new...