Attitudes of Companies in Kazakhstan Towards Knowledge Collaboration with Universities

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.