Increased public investment in PhD education to drive innovation has led to a recent rapid growth in the number of PhD graduates. Academic labour markets have not developed at the same pace. An ever-larger share of the graduates is finding employment in industry. The transition from academia to industry is not always easy. The present study aims to provide insights into the role played by PhDs' networks in the job search after graduation. Our data comprise interviews with industry-employed doctoral graduates in STEM disciplines from Sweden, Norway and the UK. Our findings show that PhDs' autonomously built personal networks can help match their specific scientific expertise with labour market demands. We distinguish country-specific patterns and characteristics of the transition, in which regional career paths are more (Scandinavia) or less (the UK) noticeable. The study has practical implications, in particular for PhD students and graduates, related to their career orientation.

The role of individual actors in knowledge-exchange collaborations has been accorded much importance. Through their involvement with industry, innovation is especially enacted in their regions. Motivations for academic engagement have been fairly researched but academics' motivations for local collaborations remain to be properly understood. The aim of this paper is therefore, to explore the motivations of academics for regional engagement. This exploration is done by drawing on empirical data collected through interviews with 16 academics in the Engineering Faculty of the University of Stavanger (UiS), Norway. It is evident that in addition to personal motivations to collaborate, academics are driven to engage locally by certain incentives that may be embedded in regionally 'non-constructed' advantages. In general, the presence of regional advantages that are relevant for advancing the academic's research provide the motivation to engage locally.

Rhoda was a RUNIN research fellow at the University of Lincoln and has a PhD on the 'Microfoundations of Academics Networks: Initiation, Evolution and Context'. She also holds a BSc. in Biochemistry from the University of Ghana and an MSc. in Innovation and Entrepreneurship from the University of Oslo. She has industrial experience working as a supply chain quality specialist in Nestle Ghana. She is a visiting researcher at the University of Lincoln's International Business School and currently works as a business development manager at a startup company, Wattero AS in the Oslo area.

Individual academic scientists engage in various collaborations through their involvement in both regional and extra-regional networks. However, little is known about how these networks are actually formed. Focusing on university and industry networks, we take the view that the process of building new networks is an entrepreneurial activity that involves unpredictability and often goal ambiguity. This paper thus employs the theories of causation and effectuation to explore how the personal networks of academics are initiated. With evidence from the networks of 12 academics based at the University of Stavanger, Norway we show that both causation and effectuation are employed by academics when building their networks. The usage of causation was found to be more consistent with building industry networks whereas effectuation was employed when building networks in academia. Consequently, effectuation was characteristic of the international networks which were found to be mostly constituted by other academics. On the regional level, a mixture of both approaches of causation and effectuation was observed, with more industry linkages suggesting a tendency to be more causal than effectual. Furthermore, while causation was employed for project level networking, effectuation was employed for establishing more individual level ties.

The number of PhD graduates getting employed in industry in the EU has seen significant increase in the past decades. Although studies show generally that personal networks play an important role in the labour market process, little is known about the actual role networks play in the specific case of PhD graduates' transition from academia to industry. Consequently, this study aims to provide insight into the roles played by PhDs' networks in the job search after graduation. The study benefits from a social network perspective, in which extended intersectoral networks can be of central importance for doctorate holders' careers. Such extended networks are developed and managed within the broader context of university-industry collaborations to facilitate knowledge exchange between the two sectors. Accordingly, the study builds on the notion of 'overlapping internal labour markets', which refers to the emergence of career models based on university-industry links. Our data comprises 31 interviews with industry-employed STEM doctorate holders from Sweden, Norway and the UK. Our findings show that networks can play a facilitating role in matching the PhD's specific scientific expertise with labour market demands. Further, we elucidate country-specific patterns and characteristics of university-industry transition after PhD graduation, with regional career paths more (Scandinavia) or less (the UK) noticeable. Finally, the study has practical implications, in particular for doctoral students and PhD graduates related to their career orientation post-PhD.