Abstract
The available quantitative data document a dynamic increase of university-industry relations within the last two decades in Germany as well as in the United States. However, the ways in which industrial funding is provided for academic research and the institutional arrangements for supporting university-industry relations are quite different in the two countries. The paper finds that American structures support long-term and open-ended co-operation, whereas in Germany, the dominant form of contract research primarily supports short-term problem solving with predefined results.