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Heliyon. 2020 Mar 13;6(3):e03404. doi: 10.1016/j.heliyon.2020.e03404. eCollection 2020 Mar.

Forms and varieties of research and industry collaboration across disciplines.

Heliyon

Annu Kotiranta, Antti Tahvanainen, Anne Kovalainen, Seppo Poutanen

Affiliations

  1. Business Finland, Finland.
  2. Finnish Forest Industries Federation, Finland.
  3. University of Turku, School of Economics, Finland.

PMID: 32195382 PMCID: PMC7078269 DOI: 10.1016/j.heliyon.2020.e03404

Abstract

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.

© 2020 The Authors.

Keywords: Disciplines; Economics; Individual motivation; Industry; Knowledge transfer; Levels of research-industry collaboration; Research institution-industry links; Research policy studies; Science and technology studies; Sociology; Types of research-industry collaboration; University-industry collaboration

References

  1. Minerva. 1983 Summer-Autumn;21(2-3):198-233 - PubMed
  2. Stat Methods Med Res. 2007 Jun;16(3):219-42 - PubMed
  3. Nature. 2015 Sep 17;525(7569):315-7 - PubMed

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