Clear legal frameworks promote successful public-private interaction. It is essential to recognize that for the private sector to best contribute to the development of S&T capacity, the public sector should maintain an enabling environment - local, national, international. Governments should provide regulatory frameworks to protect the public interest and safety, and fund research and development efforts for public goods. Because these roles interact in complex ways, and can sometimes clash, it is important to define a framework for the public-private interface so that each party is sufficiently aware of its domain's boundaries and where it may overlap with that of the other.
Public-private partnerships are critical if science and technology are to benefit society. To bring the benefits of scientific discoveries and technological innovations to all of the world's people, imaginative and vigorous forms of public-private collaboration should be actively promoted. Such partnerships can invigorate education, conduct research of mutual interest, and capitalize on the results of the research for the citizenry's benefit. But because it has not traditionally been in the self-interest of private companies to share their resources and creative competencies with the public sector, incentives are needed to encourage them. This can be accomplished through a variety of means, including tax advantages to firms for cooperative research, commercialization of publicly financed research, 'scientist-in-industry' programs, joint or specialized training, and technology parks and 'incubators.'
The international private sector sponsors S&T research that has great potential for addressing challenges in developing nations. New areas of knowledge, rendered explorable with the aid of new technologies (particularly information and communications technology), are opening up in areas such as the biological sciences. Driven by this research and development, mostly in the wealthy nations, new and exciting commercial applications across the globe - particularly important to S&T-lagging nations - are likely not only in medicine and agriculture but also in environmental protection and other critical areas. Many of these opportunities could be realized and problems solved with the advent of a favorable intellectual property regime, which the international private sector depends on to recoup its investments in research and development. Yet it is also increasingly clear that the current system of the Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) is not necessarily beneficial to the developing nations. Thus some judicious changes within TRIPS are in order to protect their inter-ests while respecting the interests of the innovators.
