Crossing the Rubicon: exploring the factors that shape academics' perceptions of the barriers to working with industry

By Valentina Tartari, Ammon J. Salter, Pablo D'Este. 2012

161 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Although academics are under increasing pressure to engage industry in their research, they often find it difficult to do so. Conflicts with industry over the timing of disclosure and the choice of topics are common. Moreover, collaborations with industry may require academics to negotiate formal contracts about the ownership of intellectual property. To help understand the factors that might mitigate these conflicts, this paper examines how the professional and collaborative experiences of academics shape their perceptions of the barriers to industry collaboration. Using a rich dataset of UK academics, we find that perceived barriers to collaboration are lower for academics with industrial and collaborative experience and for those who trust their industry partners. However, for the transactional costs of industry engagement, we find entrepreneurial experience and the diversity of methods used to collaborate with industry increases the perceived barriers to collaboration.

Subfields: Accounting, Management of Technology and Innovation, Strategy and Management

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/791223d08acd1c4f4c780864b086e9bce1d00a31

Citations in the corpus

• Pathways to impact and the strategic role of universities: new evidence on the breadth and depth of university knowledge exchange in the UK and the factors constraining its development (2012, unknown): “The study by Tartari et al (2011), which is based on a survey of academics shows that the barriers to engagement are complex and multifaceted and that conflicts over IP affect a modest share of academics.”