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Whereas recent scholarly research has provided many insights about universities engaging in commercial activities, there is still little empirical evidence regarding the opposite phenomenon of companies disseminating scientific knowledge. Our paper aims to fill this gap and explores the motivations of firms that disclose research outcomes in a scientific format. Besides considering a dimension internal to the firm, we focus particularly on knowledge sourcing from academic institutions and the appropriability regime. We conduct an econometric analysis with firm-level data from the fourth edition of the French innovation survey (CIS) and matched scientific publications for a sample of 2512 R&D performing firms from all manufacturing sectors. This analysis provides evidence that firms are more likely to adopt academic principles if they need to access scientific knowledge that is considered important for their innovation development, whereas the mere existence of collaborative links with academic institutions is not a strong determinant. Furthermore, the results suggest that the inclination of firms to publish is sensitive to the level of knowledge spillovers in a sector and the effectiveness of legal appropriation instruments. (C) 2013 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

This paper investigates what distinguishes persistence in relation to university–industry collaboration on innovation from the initiation and discontinuation of a collaboration. The underlying premise is that if a firm continues to collaborate with a university, it must consider that collaboration to be valuable. A quantitative analysis of over 2600 firms reveals that persistence is relatively common in university–industry collaborations on innovation, with more than a third of firms that engage in university collaboration continuing to collaborate with the same university over two consecutive periods. In addition, the analysis shows that firms’ investments in collaborative capabilities and different dimensions of absorptive capacity are instrumental for persistent collaboration with a university. Furthermore, persistent collaboration with a university is strongly associated with the strategic choice to engage in sustained collaboration with a broad range of partner types. Finally, the analysis reveals that geographical proximity between a firm and a university may facilitate the initiation of a collaboration, although the nearest university is not necessarily the most suitable partner. This is illustrated by the finding that geographical proximity between a firm and a university does not matter for keeping together in a persistent collaboration.

While open innovation and university–industry collaboration contribute significantly to innovation in industrialized countries, it is less clear how these create value in emerging economies and new application contexts. This study examines the introduction of global practices into the Nicaraguan context. Adopting a service-dominant logic perspective of value co-creation through interaction on multiple levels, we noted the importance of systemic orchestration or staging of the ecosystem, organizations, and challenge project delivery. We also recognize the importance of enabling activities and spaces that promote innovation. While our findings indicated that the expected and perceived value creation did not fully match, we found encouraging signs of the build-up of foundational practices to support national development agendas. There is evidence of shifted mindsets and looped learning across the system. We propose a model for the systemic development of enabling structures, value creation, and innovation spaces when transferring practices into new application areas. We expect this model to be useful for practitioners when planning and engaging in transferring open innovation practices across application contexts. The study contributes to our knowledge and practice of creating value through applying open innovation within university–industry collaboration in emerging economies, a little-studied theme.

Despite the common belief that orientation asymmetry—fundamental differences in the goals and expectations between partners—constitute a major barrier to successful collaboration, empirical evidence on how orientation asymmetry impacts university-industry collaboration is rare. We seek to understand the nature and impact of orientation asymmetry by conducting a mixed-method study of the research collaborations between a Big Pharma and its academic partners. Our interviews reveal critical asymmetries between partners, concerning not only different orientations, but also different perceptions of conflict. Building on these qualitative findings, we conduct a multi-wave, multi-source survey study to unpack the relationships between orientation asymmetry, conflict within collaboration teams, conflict perception asymmetry, and different types of collaboration success. We contribute to the literature on university-industry collaborations by providing a much-needed comparison of the perspectives from both sides of the collaboration and developing a nuanced understanding of the dynamics within collaboration project teams. We discuss the implications of our findings for researchers, managers, and policymakers. ISSN:0048-7333 ISSN:1873-7625

Collaboration between universities and their local stakeholders is becoming a key success factor for the growth of regional entrepreneurial ecosystems. Efficient energy solutions are often facing challenges in innovation diffusion, which is in contrast to the growing demand for providing answers to key ecological problems. In order to present how an efficient Triple Helix collaboration could foster and support niche innovations, an applied research project is introduced. This unique university-industry-government cooperation brings a students' idea to a proof-of-concept project thus covers the entire innovation process. The selected case offers insights of how and why such initiative could emerge, as well as discusses its implications for future technological innovations and in particular those that are about to emerge in regional entrepreneurial ecosystems. Networking, win-win-situations as well as a strong problem orientation were identified as key success factors which may accelerate efficient future Triple Helix collaboration and cooperation for ensuring a higher innovation diffusion success.

In the context of R&D collaborations between universities and industry, this study investigates the co-production process and the contextual elements that shape it. We develop a conceptual framework that builds on the service-dominant logic perspective that value propositions emerge from the interaction between co-producing parties and the integration of resources. Specifically, the framework explicates how individual, organizational, and external factors shape the type of interactions and the platforms used, the availability and use of operand and operant resources, and the organizational and individual outcomes sought in R&D collaborative projects. We investigate the interplay among these factors through group interviews with UK industry practitioners and university researchers in the context of digital research projects. The types of interaction, resources, and outcomes sought that characterize successful R&D collaboration are revealed, and the contextual aspects that enable, facilitate, block, or create barriers to successful R&D collaborations are identified. Finally, we propose five practical principles for the successful development of collaborative R&D projects within the university–industry context.

A new program and project management (PgPM) approach especially devoted to support collaborative university-industry R&D funded contracts is being developed from an exploratory study. This paper describes how the identified key program management activities/practices are dependent on the program stakeholders’ characteristics, namely contractual relationship - university vs. industry, professional category, role in the program context, PM experience, level of education, gender and age. A sample of 170 questionnaire responses from stakeholders of a real program, named HMIExcel, is used. There were few different perceptions observed between program stakeholders, which might indicate that the key program management activities within the PgPM approach are so relevant that there is a general consensus between different stakeholders.

This paper presents a new program and project management (PPM) approach especially devoted to support collaborative university-industry R&D funded contracts. While the literature provides some advice on how to embark on designing such PPM approach, university-industry collaboration contexts require specific guidance. The research described in this paper aims to make some contribution to theory as well as to practice by discussing the PPM approach adoption in a case study collaborative university-industry R&D funded contract between the University of Minho and Bosch Car Multimedia Portugal S.A., named – HMIExcel. The results show that emphasis should be given to structured objective setting, good progress monitoring and effective communication. The research study is ongoing through the use of a questionnaire and focus groups, in order to improve the presented PPM approach conceptualization.

Collaboration during development research stage means that partners work together to produce new products or to improve existing ones. This research aims to determine the success factor to reduce orientation and resources-related barriers. Eight leaders were chosen for interview, the result determines several factors to reduce these types of barriers such as researchers should e nsure both sides attend the meetings, leaders must communicate among each other, develop grant charts, industries should provide facilities, outsource facilities and academicians train new assistants. The results provide the best practices should be implemented by the collaboration stakeholders in order to develop effective collaboration.

During the last two decades university-industry relations have been shifted from sponsorship and donation based relationships to long-term strategic collaboration all over the world. In post-socialist countries this procedure took a different course than in the Western world. While the above mentioned topic has been becoming more and more popular throughout the past decades, qualities of managers and their best practices of the RDI spheres have not been investigated in post-socialist countries. This study aims to diminish this research gap, create new knowledge in the field of management and contribute with valuable evidence to the ongoing debate on RDI networking that could be applied in practice. Beside conducting a survey to identify preferred management types, structured interviews were carried out together with secondary data analysis in order to explore potential problem sources in U-I relations. The study investigated the perceptions of Hungarian and Russian actors of university-industry collaboration in order to determine whether their common socialist background is reflected in their way of thinking, and to define challenges and suggest solutions that could improve the efficiency of U-I collaboration. The main finding of the research is that in both countries the problems of U-I collaboration are similar, while the preferred management style, which is expected to treat these issues, differs in Russia and Hungary.

The EU lags behind in innovation compared to other major world economies due to, amongst others, lower levels of investment in innovation and an insufficient use of communication technologies. SMEs find it difficult to fully exploit the business potential of the scientific and technological advances made by research and education institutes. International Innovation Labs are conceived as a collaborative meeting ground between SMEs and business schools with a twofold objective: (i) to stimulate business model innovation in SMEs; (ii) to develop a systematic approach for innovation processes, adjusted to their limited financial and marketing resources. The knowledge acquired from the case-based approach was used to create an innovation manual with a practical roadmap to innovation within SMEs. Special attention is given to create an open innovation culture within businesses.

Collaboration between universities and private sector is a key to increase innovative performance of an economy. Linkages between academia and industry may take different forms largely pending on the local context. In Kazakhstan direct partnerships between universities and business entities are rare and not very well developed. This paper studies the attitudes of telecommunications companies towards knowledge collaboration with universities and outlines the factors hindering university- industry collaboration. The discussion builds on data collected via self-administered questionnaires and face-to-face interviews with the representatives of 28 telecommunications companies. The findings reveal how these opinions depend on size and origin of businesses. This study makes a contribution by exploring this issue in the case of an emerging economy (Kazakhstan) and provides policy advice on the development of government strategies to foster such university-industry partnerships.

Internship is a good program for the students to experience the real industry environment in advance before graduation and it is also good to excite them to study harder. But, during the period of internship, it is not easy to check the progress and status of each student by the supervising professor periodically. In addition, relatively short period of internship is another problem for the students to experience real design problems in the industry field. Capstone design is another good program for the students to experience the entire process of engineering design but to find the proper real field problems annually is not easy for the university. To solve these problems and enhance the university-industry collaboration, a novel program named as Internship & Capstone Design Integrated program (ICIP) is developed by Dongguk University in Korea. In this paper, the detailed information of ICIP including the management process is introduced and the effect of ICIP is analyzed using the case studies.

Industry sector needs to be in collaboration with university in order to reach the information that will contribute its performance. The university also has some expectations from such kind of collaboration such as increasing the capacity, conducting R&D, institutionalizing, making firms ready in terms of intellectual capital and providing financial benefit as well as processing data and finding an application area. Collaboration of university and industry both leads the firms to provide a competitive advantage by creating synergy and also causes set of problems. The aim of this research is to investigate the level at which the university and industry collaboration exists in Konya province, to ascertain the frequency of collaboration subjects and the problems encountered during this collaboration. According to our research that we did on 142 firms in Konya, by not being on enough level of collaborating degree, there is a positive directed linear relationship between the frequency degree collaborating with the university and the abundance of the number of employees in the institution which is the necessity of being institutional. Because of this, the collaboration in the institutional firms is often inclined to come true. Furthermore, it was set higher that the problems of the administrators whose frequency degree of collaboration with the university is high in comparison with the people whose frequency degree of collaboration is low.

This paper presents the strategic and tactical approaches on university and industry collaboration in contemporary commercial climate. Studies have shown that only twenty percent of collaborations have resulted in successful tangibles that are industry- applicable. This ties back to the Outcome-Impact Gap whereby both universities and industries have different expectations and requirements to meet. This paper therefore provides a commercial approach which may be adopted by the university in propagating the collaboration resulting in a win-win situation. The approach is divided into two key areas; long-term strategic planning and tactical standpoint that will establish the groundwork for a successful collaboration as well as the handling of day- to-day operations.

a b s t r a c t As the economies and indigenous technological capabilities of the new industrialized countries improve, national universities and public research organizations are expected to become increasingly important for supporting indigenous firms to move into more dynamic and high-opportunity industries. However, the characteristics of collaboration with universities may be very specific depending on whether the industry partner is engaged in mature or emergent activities. In this study, we explore and discuss the role of university-industry collaboration for the development of innovation in mature and emergent industries in new industrialized countries. Evidence from 24 research groups in science and engineering departments in universities and public research organizations in Brazil provides preliminary empirical corroboration for the proposal that the contexts and role of university-industry collaboration in mature and emergent industries are diverse. Knowledge networks are underdeveloped in emerging industries, and public support for research projects is dispersed. This means that university research and devel- opment projects with firms in emergent industries are less likely than projects with firms in mature industries to be the result of academic initiatives and public calls for research projects, or to be wholly financed by major public research sponsors. In emergent industries, the role of students and firm employ- ees is crucial for mediating between public research organizations and companies. The policy implications of these preliminary findings are discussed. © 2012 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

A successful university and industry collaboration needs to involve a dedicated project champion to manage the collaboration and to keep the relationship on-going at all times. The success factors will depend largely on the strategic and tactical approaches made by the university as one of the party or collaborators. This paper provides a commercial approach which may be adopted by the university in propagating the collaboration resulting in a win-win situation for both collaborators. First, the collaboration in a strategic sense between the university and the industry can be shaped in ways such as research, research consultancy, staff attachment, student internship, student placement, examination of student scholastic achievement, and etc. The second stage is now known as tactical aspect of the collaboration. The tactical aspect must address at least 3 aspects; personnel, finance & facilities, and a thorough implementation plan for both parties. Milestones must be set to ensure that the support level is optimized so that the action plan and successes arising from the plan are constantly monitored and adjusted if necessary.

The purpose of this paper is to propose an evaluation framework for university-industry collaborative research and technological initiative at Universiti Teknologi Malaysia, by identifying the success criteria of university-industry collaborative research and technological initiative as perceived by academics. Five type of research collaboration mechanisms, which are; Consultancy and Technical Services Provision, Cooperative R&D Agreement, Licensing, Contract Research, and Spin-off Companies discussed and success criteria for each mechanism adopted from previous models in other countries. Based on these data, initial framework proposed. This study provides a framework to assess success of research collaboration activities from perception of academics. It's useful for improving management of research collaboration activities in universities.

Collaborating with industry constitutes discretionary behavior for academics: it is shaped by the institutional environment and individual perceptions of the potential costs and benefits. Drawing on a large-scale survey of Italian university researchers, we find the decision to collaborate with industry is influenced by perceived threats to a researcher's academic freedom. Secrecy concerns do not appear significant, while the desire to acquire additional resources influences the intensity of collaboration. We explore the implications of these findings for university--industry collaboration. Copyright 2012 The Author 2012. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of Associazione ICC. All rights reserved., Oxford University Press.