Academic engagement with industry: the role of research quality and experience

This work explores the role of university department characteristics on academic engagement with industry. In particular, we investigate the role played by research quality and previous experience across different scientific disciplines. We test our hypotheses on a dataset of publicly funded university-industry partnerships in the UK, combined with data from the UK Research Assessment Exercises 2001 and 2008. Our data reveal a negative link between academic quality and the level of engagement with industry for departments in the basic sciences, and a positive relationship for departments in the applied sciences. Our results further show that the role of research quality for academic engagement tightly depends on the level of department previous experience in university-industry partnerships, notably in the basic sciences, where experience acts as a moderating factor. The findings of this work are highly relevant for policy makers and university managers, and contribute to the innovation literature focused on the investigation of the determinants of valuable knowledge transfer practices in academia.