Knowledge links between European universities and firms: A review.

Difficulty in extracting scientific and research findings from EU universities and placing such knowledge at the commercial disposal of innovation-dependent firms and industries is a cause for grave concern in many European states and regions. We take stock of the evidence from the perspective of knowledge-seeking firms and knowledge-generating universities, an exercise that reveals striking asymmetries: firms presently seek mainly public science outputs of academics, while universities encourage their academics to pursue proprietary science opportunities more heavily in their dealings with business and industry, pursuit of which may provoke other academics to oppose greater commercialization of university research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]