Moreover, especially in live science but not only, the universities generate more and more spin-off companies. Thus, the university lab can be used to generate know-how, while the company comes up with a product and generates a back-flow of money, in an ideal case.

Finally, we should consider that the know-how transfer from universities to companies is fine, as long as the know-how stays within the university support belt. With other words, when swiss know-how flows to swiss companies, jobs will be generated and taxes payed. However, if there is no industry for the know-how of the university, then the investment in university research is lost.

In brief, there are many cases when industry and universities profits from each other. But it is important that the politics and society play their part well too and make a good playground.

One of the most obvious examples are the semiconductor industry. Chip makers put a lot of money in developing faster and better computers. This then directly benefits any research where e.g. computational power is important. Basic researchers would not have the money to develop the new processes needed for faster chips themselves.

Also another example is when the industry takes something from basic research (e.g. AFM or other microscopy applications). The industry wants to make money, i.e. sell their machines. For this, they develop them in a way that also non-experts can use the machnies. This way, new tools become more accessible to other research fields. Take for example improvements in optical microscopy or spectroscopy(confocal imaging, FCS, …). These tools were mostly invented and improved by physicists, but through industry they became valuable tools eg. for biologists.