Although the literature on university-industry links has begun to uncover the reasons for, and types of, collaboration between universities and businesses, it offers little explanation of ways to reduce the barriers in these collaborations. This paper seeks to unpack the nature of the obstacles to collaborations between universities and industry, exploring influence of different mechanisms in lowering barriers related to the orientation of universities and to the transactions involved in work with university partners. Drawing on a large-scale survey and public records, this paper explores the effects of collaboration experience, breadth of interaction, and interorganizational trust on lowering different types of barriers. The analysis shows that prior experience of collaborative research lowers orientation-related barriers and that greater levels of trust reduce both types of barriers studied. It also indicates that breadth of interaction diminishes the orientation-related, but increases transaction-related barriers. The paper explores the implications of these findings for policies aimed at facilitating university-industry collaboration.

Business incubators (BIs) have been established around the world to stimulate new business creation. Whilst it is accepted that incubation models have evolved, little is known about whether existing incubators have adjusted their value proposition to incorporate recent incubation paradigms or have simply remained operating as originally founded. We present data collected within seven BIs and their tenants regarding service provision and selection criteria. Our findings show that whilst BIs of all generations offer similar support services, tenants in older generation BIs make less use of the BI's service portfolio. We suggest this is a consequence of slack selection criteria and the absence of clearly defined exit policies. These results imply that older generation BIs should update their service portfolio while simultaneously imposing stricter selection criteria and introducing exit policies. Finally, we discuss the wider implications this raises for BIs' managers, prospective tenants and policy makers.