University-industry Knowledge Transfer Research Articles

University–Industry Technology Transfer: Empirical Findings from Chinese Industrial Firms

The knowledge and innovation generated by researchers at universities is transferred to industries through patent licensing, leading to the commercialization of academic output. In order to investigate the development of Chinese university–industry technology transfer and whether this kind of collaboration may affect a firm’s innovation output, we collected approximately 6400 license contracts made between more than 4000 Chinese firms and 300 Chinese universities for the period between 2009 and 2014. This is the first study on Chinese university–industry knowledge transfer using a bipartite social network analysis (SNA) method, which emphasizes centrality estimates. We are able to investigate empirically how patent license transfer behavior may affect each firm’s innovative output by allocating a centrality score to each firm in the university–firm technology transfer network. We elucidate the academic–industry knowledge by visualizing flow patterns for different regions with the SNA tool, Gephi. We find that innovation capabilities, R&D resources, and technology transfer performance all vary across China, and that patent licensing networks present clear small-world phenomena. We also highlight the Bipartite Graph Reinforcement Model (BGRM) and BiRank centrality in the bipartite network. Our empirical results reveal that firms with high BGRM and BiRank centrality scores, long history, and fewer employees have greater innovative output.

Academic Scientists Mobility: The Hidden Pipe of Tacit Knowledge Transfer from Academia to Industry

Knowledge transfer (KT) from academia to industry is critical to support economic growth and to contribute to a local open innovation ecosystem. Research on university-industry knowledge transfer (UIKT) mainly focuses on codified knowledge. However, the vast majority of knowledge produced by academia is tacit and, in some cases, cannot be made explicit thus remaining embodied in individuals. Building on knowledge management theory and social network theory, this article proposes that socialization occurs in two forms, weak and strong socialization, and that strong socialization is needed for tacit UIKT. We propose that professional mobility of PhD graduates is an instrument to measure tacit UIKT. Through a database of the PhD graduates of a large pluridisciplinary European university, our results show that fields hardness and applicability have a positive effect on tacit UIKT and that alignment with national industrial specialization and free-movement policies influence tacit KT to the national industry. We contribute to knowledge management theory by exploring academic scientists’ mobility as a pipe of tacit UIKT as well as by extending the concept of socialization from intra-organizational to inter-organizational settings, by proposing the concepts of weak and strong socialization, and by showing how strong socialization and tacit UIKT depend on knowledge, industrial and political dimensions.

New business models for public innovation intermediaries supporting emerging innovation systems: The case of the Internet of Things

In several countries, governments have assigned to public innovation intermediaries (PIIs) the mandate to support the digital transition, by facilitating the development and adoption of new digital technologies on the part of firms and other organisations. This new mandate requires PIIs to upgrade their business models, moving beyond their traditional involvement in firms’ technology upgrading and university-industry knowledge transfer, toward supporting the creation of new innovation systems around the emerging digital technologies. To understand how PIIs are reconfiguring their business models to support the digital transition, we study four cases of PIIs operating in the United Kingdom and France, whose mandates include providing support for firms and other organisations in the implementation of new digital technologies, focusing in particular on the Internet of Things (IoT). We show that, despite their differences, all four PIIs have substantially reconfigured their business models in similar ways in order to fulfil these mandates. Both the formal legitimacy arising from their policy mandate, and the knowledge resources and informal legitimacy they have developed, have played a decisive role in their ability to orchestrate the development of innovation systems around IoT.

University-Industry Knowledge Transfer: The Case of the Godfathers of Artificial Intelligence

Though university-industry linkages are channels for two-way knowledge sharing, in the case of breakthrough research, it is the path from scientific discovery to commercial application that is of primary interest. The central question is whether knowledge can be codified and disseminated in disembodied form, or if engagement with knowledge creators, either explicit engagement through collaborative relationships or potential engagement made possible by geographic proximity, is required. We consider the case of the godfathers of artificial intelligence (AI), Geoffrey Hinton (University of Toronto), Yoshua Bengio (Université of Montréal) and Yann LeCun (New York University), who collectively won the 2018 Turing Award, the Nobel prize of computing, and examine the factors that affect the ability of private technology developments to absorb and build upon their research. We construct a dataset consisting of the modern AI patent universe and use patent citations to godfather research as an indicator of knowledge transfer, modelling the likelihood that an AI patent will cite godfather research as a function of geographic proximity and social relations. We find strong effects for geographic proximity, where inventors were former co-inventors or co-authors of the godfathers, and for absorptive capacity as a crucial control.

University-industry innovation community dynamics and knowledge transfer: Evidence from China

Much of the emphasis on university-industry (U–I) knowledge transfer has been on facilitating dyadic interactions between universities and firms. However, merely a few studies have investigated knowledge transfer from a community-based innovation perspective. This research unveils the explicit structure and dynamic characteristics of U–I communities and examines the relationship between community dynamics and university knowledge transfer. The results indicate that U–I innovation communities in China present single- and multi-center structures and are evolving from “localizing” to “specializing”. Using membership turnover as a means of measuring community dynamics, we discover that community dynamics significantly affect university knowledge transfer in a curvilinear manner. Moreover, this inverted U-shaped relationship is moderated by a university's within-community position. The results of the other variables show that geographical distance does not significantly affect community-based knowledge transfer, while knowledge diversity positively contributes towards knowledge transfer performance. Our findings advance the innovation community theory by mapping social network mechanisms into community generation, evolution, and knowledge transfer. Notable practical implications are provided for U–I innovation community stakeholders and practitioners who engage in knowledge commercialization and innovation.

Open Innovation Community for University–Industry Knowledge Transfer: A Colombian Case

Academia–enterprise collaboration is understood as a determinant that improves innovation and competitiveness. The mechanisms by which this collaboration occurs have awakened increasing interest among academics, as well as in the business sector. This research aims to identify how open innovation communities can mediate the academia-enterprise relationship, as well as the factors that are more affected by this mediation. Based on the literature, the article addresses the definition of open innovation communities (OICs), university–enterprise cooperation, knowledge transfer (KT), as well as an understanding of OICs as a mechanism for academia–enterprise transfer. An analysis of twelve OICs, conformed by professors, students, graduates, and experts from a Colombian higher education institution is performed. For the data analysis, a factor analysis involving structural equation modeling is carried out. Our results highlight the most important characteristics to take into account in the study of knowledge transfer when OICs are involved, and they also indicate the level of connection between these factors.

A University-industry knowledge transfer online education approach via a cloud-based database global solution

Knowledge sharing between different types of organisations, in this case the University-Industry (U-I) relation, contains barriers related to the differentiation of structure and purpose for each organisation. Both the university and industry have to make sure that they have access to data and information. This accessibility enables the value-added process of transforming data into knowledge. The purpose of this paper is the analysis of U-I cooperation– especially under the new online requirements – an illustration of how the knowledge is created and shared in the organisation based on the socialisation, externalisation, combination, and internalisation (SECI) model and how this is aligned to the value proposition. As a knowledge management example case, a database for the Centre for Energy Technologies of Aarhus University was developed that will overtime help the university to increase its value proposition and be the heart of knowledge exchange with the industry in an organised way. The value of this work is intended to pave the way in building structured working relations between the industry and academia, facilitating the means in order to achieve a higher degree of overall efficiency.

Why Most University-Industry Partnerships Fail to Endure and How to Create Value and Gain Competitive Advantage through Collaboration – A Systematic Review

<p><strong>Purpose</strong>: The collaborative work between universities and enterprises is increasingly important given the growing competitive environment, transformed by intense global competition, rapid technological change and shorter product life cycles. In this article several case studies are analysed, as well as relevant academic literature, to get an insight concerning the current relationship status between enterprises and universities.</p><p><strong>Methodology/Approach</strong>: The methodology is grounded on the literature review on University-Industry Partnerships, selected from indexed sources, and targeted to case-based experiences where practical feedback is given.</p><p><strong>Findings: </strong>It is shown that university-industry knowledge transfer contributes significantly to an increase of quality, productivity and economic value of businesses. It is found that the lack of controlling mechanisms and lack of efficient communication paths have a strong negative impact in collaboration. Key collaboration factors that support stronger relationships were compiled and discussed in support of better mitigation strategies.</p><p><strong>Research Limitation/implication</strong>: The limited availability of case studies reporting on operative improvements introduced by policy changes hinders the effectiveness of the findings.</p><strong>Originality/Value of paper</strong>: The paper analyses the collaboration of the university with industry based on case studies with a focus on value creation and how to gain a competitive advantage through collaboration.

Knowledge transfer from universities to low- and medium-technology industries: evidence from Italian winemakers

The aim of the study is to explore the links that firms from low and medium technology (LMT) industries establish with universities for innovative purposes. Even though knowledge transfer from university to industry has generally increased over time, it has mostly been directed at firms in high-tech industries (HT) due to the belief that firms from LMT industries often lack the absorptive capacity necessary to take advantage of external knowledge. In the case of LMT industries, university-industry knowledge transfer has received less attention from management and innovation studies, and understanding the specific conditions where universities may contribute to the innovative effort of LMT firms largely remains unexplored. With the aim of contributing to this debate, the paper focuses on the wine sector, generally considered an LMT industry. Firstly, the study assesses to which type of innovation promoted by winemakers do universities effectively contribute. Secondly, the study examines under what conditions universities assume a relevant role in the innovative activity of LMT firms. To test our hypotheses, the study uses primary data collected through a survey targeting Italian wine SMEs and runs a set of econometric evaluations. Findings show that universities represent a relevant source of knowledge mainly for organizational and commercial innovation, but not for product innovation. For these purposes, university knowledge related to social sciences has a more relevant input for firms than does knowledge with higher scientific and technological content.

How do universities shape founding teams? Social proximity and informal mechanisms of knowledge transfer in student entrepreneurship

This paper investigates informal mechanisms of knowledge transfer (KT) from a local university to entrepreneurial teams comprising students and recent graduates. While the extant literature on university-industry KT largely focuses on formal mechanisms aimed at stimulating entrepreneurial initiatives in high-tech (HT) sectors, it overlooks the effect of university-industry KT on nascent entrepreneurship in low-medium tech (LMT) sectors. To fill this gap in the literature, we carry out a mixed-method analysis that exploits a dataset of 154 new business ideas (and 535 team members) presented at a business plan competition in Rimini from 2010 to 2017. Our findings highlight a robust relationship between educational field and the R&D intensity of entrepreneurial projects: students take advantage of the knowledge acquired at university to develop entrepreneurial projects with higher technological content than those planned by non-graduates. Furthermore, the empirical evidence shows that the local university nurtures the formation of ties among students and recent graduates enrolled in the same courses and fosters their efforts to launch new ventures. Finally, the qualitative analysis identifies relevant and non-traditional mechanisms of KT that are being exploited by nascent entrepreneurs to develop their business ideas in the LMT and HT sectors.

Varied university-industry knowledge transfer channels and product innovation performance in Guangdong manufacturing firms

ABSTRACT This study aims to investigate the extent to which Chinese firms engage in varied university-industry knowledge transfer channels and the impact on product innovation performance. Data was collected on 14 distinct types of channels used by manufacturing firms located at the centre of the pearl river delta in Guangdong Province of China. Our results revealed that varied channels has a curvilinear relationship with product innovation. Moreover, it exhibits a curvilinear moderating effect on internal R&D capability–innovation relationship. It negatively moderates R&D capability–innovation relationship at low range of varied channels, but the negative moderating effect weakens as the range increases and eventually is converted to a positive one after the range reaches a turning point. The findings furthered our understanding on varied university-industry knowledge transfer channels and the associated innovation benefits.

Forms and varieties of research and industry collaboration across disciplines.

Academic scientists' engagement with industry is a central mechanism in university-industry knowledge transfer and the development of collaborative research. However, most empirical studies are limited to researchers in technical disciplines. We extend the analysis beyond engineers to include broader disciplinary fields, including humanists, economists, medicine, biosciences and cross-disciplinary scientists. Our findings suggest that cross-disciplinary researchers and researchers in technical sciences engage in more industry interaction than their peers. The motivations for the choice of research area play an important role in industry collaboration. Furthermore, we identify three types of industry interaction (interaction modes) among researchers: 1. educational interaction, consisting of conferences or seminars, corporate training programs, or supervising thesis work; 2. research interaction, consisting of shared publications, research-related consulting, public research programs and contract research; 3. integrated interaction, consisting of joint research in shared premisesand employment contracts with companies.Of these, the educational and research interaction modes (1 and 2) are motivated by the possibility of individual academic advancement. Integrated interaction (3) is rare and significantly correlates with only one of the three types of industry cooperation motivations: commercialization of research findings. We conclude by identifying future research needs, opportunities for methodological improvement and policy interventions.

Fostering university-industry collaborations through university teaching

ABSTRACT University-industry links and their impact on innovation processes have been widely acknowledged. However, previous studies have mainly examined university-industry knowledge transfer activities from the perspective of the research and third stream missions. This paper goes a step further, analysing such processes from the perspective of the university’s teaching mission. More specifically, it explores how educational crowdsourcing platforms help bring universities and industry together to develop joint activities in undergraduate and graduate programmes. Nine platforms with different business models were examined. A qualitative exploratory approach was adopted to manually collect and analyse data from the platforms. This study identified three categories of educational crowdsourcing platforms based on their focus (education, crowdsourcing or networking). The analysis shows that, although these platforms have some shortcomings, they provide benefits to all stakeholders by facilitating experiential learning, promoting skills acquisition and encouraging the development of new ideas to meet industry needs.

Formal-informal channels of university-industry knowledge transfer: the case of Australian business schools

ABSTRACTThe transfer of knowledge between university and industry is a significant activity that is facilitated by government policy and incentives. Australian universities have a global reputation for excellence in research and training. However, the country’s low score in innovation ranking has prompted the government and industry bodies to emphasise the importance of and provide support to high-quality science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) fields. We study the knowledge transfer practices of 10 Australian universities and provide insights into how these universities, and in particular the Business Schools, respond to the funding cuts faced by the university sector. We find that the universities use both formal (research centres, incubators, and contract-research and commercialisation) and informal channels (internships, mentoring, industry talks, transdisciplinary research platforms, collaborative Ph.D. programs, and industry training programs) to transfer knowledge with industry partners.

Knowledge heterogeneity in university-industry knowledge transfer: a case analysis of Xu’s Ruyi textile

ABSTRACTExploring the mechanisms and keyfactors affecting the performance of University-Industry knowledgetransfer, the paper conducts an exploratory case analysis based on the successful knowledge transfer between a textile university professor and Shandong Xu’s Ruyi Textile Enterprise in China. Wesort and investigate the first-hand interview data and second-handnews and video data, and then use the qualitative research andanalysis software NVIVO to analyze the high-frequency words andextract the subject words. Based on the analysis and observation, we find that the successful industrialization of university researchis closely related to its knowledge transfer. Second, the uniqueand robust heterogeneous knowledge formed during the process of University-Industry knowledge transfer is unique and robust. Third, the heterogeneity of knowledge has a positive effect on the University-Industry knowledge transfer. Our research provides valuable insights for practitioners to effectively facilitate the knowledge transfer between universities and industries.

Trends of scale-up effects of ICT sector

Abstract The knowledge transfer is essential for future success not only of the enterprise but the sector and the economy as a whole. The ability of a knowledge transfer produce value and make the enterprise more successful. There is a clear evidence that ICT sector may positively influence enterprise competitiveness but also social and environmental issues as well. The paper deals with scale-up effects of ICT sector and the importance of the university-industry knowledge transfer as well.

Tracing university–industry knowledge transfer through a text mining approach

This study investigates knowledge transfer of university research to industry moving forward from traditional indicators by using methods from computational linguistics. We introduce a novel empirical use of pattern recognition and text mining tools to compare scientific publications to company documents. The contribution of the paper is twofold; first, a new method for tracing knowledge transfer is suggested and, second, our understanding of university–industry knowledge transfer is increased by introducing an additional perspective. We find that common text mining tools are suitable to identify concrete chunks of research knowledge within the collaborating industry. The method proves direct links between published university research and the information disclosed by companies in their websites and documents. We offer an extension to commonly used concepts, which rely either on qualitative case studies or the assessment of commercial indicators for the assessment of university research. Our empirical evidence shows that knowledge exchange can be detected with this approach, and, given some additions in the tools selection and adaption, it has the potential to become a supplementary method for the research community.

The complementarities between formal and informal channels of university–industry knowledge transfer: a longitudinal approach

In this paper we study the interplay between formal and informal channels of university–industry knowledge transfer (UIKT) over time. To do so, we rely on longitudinal and qualitative interview data analysis allowing us to observe the notable research and valorization trajectories of two reputable researchers in the fields of robotics and pharmacy at the University of Strasbourg. Our findings show that: (1) dynamic complementarities between formal and informal UIKT are important; (2) at the individual and team level, such interactions contribute to creating a strong cumulative effect with regard to valorization activity; (3) They also reinforce the collective dimension of valorization, which is performed by teams rather than by isolated individuals; and (4) the best academic entrepreneurs make use of the different UIKT channels in an entrepreneurial way with a clear long-run valorization strategy in mind. These results have strong managerial and political implications with regard to the valorization of academic research.

“One foot in industry, the other in academia”

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to examine professional service firms’ (PSFs) motives and benefits related to their engagement in knowledge transfer interactions with universities via their employees also acting as adjunct professors (APs).Design/methodology/approachThe study adopts a qualitative approach relying mainly on data collected via semi-structured interviews with both top managers and APs employed by five engineering consultancies operating in Sweden.FindingsThe findings suggest that, while seeking stability is the major determinant of engagement in relations with universities via APs, PSFs highpoint the significance of reciprocity and legitimacy motives. The most substantial benefits appear to be related to firms’ access to academic research, core competencies and human resource development as well as marketing outcomes. Benefits are found to be dynamic in character with higher-order benefits being generated by low-order over time.Research limitations/implicationsThe findings rely on a small sample of PSFs and should be verified by future research with larger samples of PSFs operating in a broader range of industries and national contexts.Practical implicationsThe study results may be of interest to managers of both firms and universities interested in establishing, formalising or broadening university-industry interactions.Originality/valueThe study advances the current knowledge on the rationales of service firms engaged in various university-industry knowledge transfer interactions by making empirical and conceptual contributions to the understanding of adjunct professorship as a particular form of such interactions.

University knowledge transfer: exploring organisational structures to create strategic alignment

Whilst knowledge and technology transfer unarguably present an important source of wealth for a nation and an important component of a modern university's offering to society, the management of this activity is complex and as a result, many economies struggle to realise their expectations. Academics and commercial organisations are quick to blame inflexible and bureaucratic university transfer offices and administrators for this shortfall. This paper takes an approach of exploring the structural arrangements of knowledge transfer offices across various countries to identify if different structures help overcome different strategic and operational challenges involved in university-industry knowledge transfer. The findings identify that interdependent and complex management practices coupled with equally complex organisational architectures lead to issues of conflicting pressures and ambiguous governance. Furthermore, this research illustrates a number of 'structural' solutions that universities have adopted to try to side-step some of the problems.