Engaging the scholar: Three types of academic consulting and their impact on universities and industry

By Markus Perkmann, Kathryn Walsh. 2008

316 citations recorded by the source corpus.

We present a conceptual framework of academic consulting and explore its impacts on universities and the benefits to innovating firms. We distinguish between three types of academic consulting: opportunity-driven, commercialization-driven and research-driven. Exploring the implications of these different types, first, we postulate that consulting has limited impact on biasing academic research towards more 'applied' themes. Secondly, while we expect research-driven consulting activities to be positively associated with research productivity, opportunity-driven consulting will have a negative impact. Thirdly, we differentiate between different functions of academic consulting for different types of firms.

Subfields: Information Systems and Management, Strategy and Management

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/687e315e2fb1d57c95c56b158c6009800f0ddc19

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In Information Systems and Management

In Strategy and Management

Citations in the corpus

Engaging Excellence? Effects of Faculty Quality on University Engagement with Industry (2011, unknown): “Finally, consulting refers to research or advisory services provided by individual academic researchers to their industry clients (Perkmann and Walsh, 2008).”
Industry Funding of University Research and Scientific Productivity (2011, unknown): “Rosenberg (1998) regards industry contacts as a source of new research ideas and thus argues that science can benefit from increased collaboration with industry (see also Mansfield 1995 and Siegel et al.”
In good company: : The influence of peers on industry engagement by academic scientists (2012, background): “…extreme variant of this behaviour, it is more common for academics continue with their research careers and engage with industry in ways that may include patenting and licensing, collaboration and consulting (Agrawal, 2006, Link et al., 2007, Owen-Smith and Powell, 2001, Perkmann and Walsh, 2008).”
Universities and Knowledge-Intensive Business Services (KIBS) as Sources of Knowledge for Innovative Firms in Peripheral Regions (2015, background): “Finally, various forms of academic consulting may play an important role, although this form of engagement remains understudied (PERKMANN and WALSH, 2008; RENTOCCHINI et al., 2013).”
Why do academics engage with industry? The entrepreneurial university and individual motivations (2009, background): “In addition, many universities have formal policies for encouraging their academic staff to pursue industry assignments for a specified share of their time (Perkmann and Walsh, 2008).”