The 30 years of financial autonomy of the three São Paulo state universities coincide with the period in which they expanded the protection of intellectual property generated by their researchers, multiplied cooperation with the productive sector and encouraged the formation of technology-based companies. In the 1980s, research collaborations between companies and the universities of São Paulo (USP), Campinas State (Unicamp) and São Paulo State (Unesp) were already frequent. But the achievement of a fixed percentage of the collection of the Tax on Circulation of Goods and Services (ICMS) to finance the trio of institutions, in 1989, had an influence on their ability to produce innovations with an economic impact on society. “An essential condition for a university to cooperate with companies is to have vigorous research. And financial autonomy was the key to expanding the scientific production of São Paulo state universities”, says physicist Marcos Nogueira Martins, director of the USP Innovation Agency, referring to the increase in the number of scientific publications from the three institutions, which grew 16 times over the last three decades.
