Proximity and Impact of University-industry Collaborations.

Literature has shown that proximity between university and industry partners affects the probability to initiate, the intensity and the quality of university-industry collaborations (UICs). Instead, limited attention has been paid to the relationships between proximity and the types of impacts of UICs. In this study, we analyse the association between collaborators' proximity and the extent to which UICs generate economic, social and knowledge impacts. We build on an evidence base combining: (i) reports describing the impacts of 415 UICs funded by the United Kingdom's innovation agency, (ii) data on UIC partners, and (iii) in-depth interviews. In doing so, we showcase an original approach to capturing the types of impact of each UIC by means of topic detection. Our analysis suggests that cognitive and institutional proximity are substitutes in relation to knowledge impact, geographical and institutional proximity are substitutes in relation to economic impact, and social impact is associated with cognitive and institutional distance. We derive implications for universities, businesses and policymakers on how best to exploit proximity between university and industry to generate valuable impacts on society, the economy and the knowledge base. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]