Barriers and facilitators of university-industry collaboration for research, development and innovation: a systematic review

Abstract

Cooperation in research, development and innovation (RD&I) between universities or research institutes and industries plays a fundamental role in the economic development of a country. Industry benefits from state-of-the-art laboratories and technologies from academia, while institutes learn about business reality and market needs. Numerous barriers to the establishment and maintenance of these partnerships have been investigated and reported in the literature, but the information generated by these empirical studies is very fragmented and there is a need to consider the barriers systematically in order to clarify the topic. The aims of this systematic review were to analyze university-industry collaborations set up for the purpose of RD&I in an effort to recognize the barriers and facilitators of the process and to identify the approaches by which such barriers may be overcome. Following searches of the Scopus database and application of the exclusion criteria, 86 relevant articles were identified and submitted to bibliometric analysis. Subsequently, 75 articles were selected for in-depth content analysis, and the ideas embodied therein were presented in a structured and comprehensive manner. Barriers were evaluated according to three different theoretical perspectives, namely the triple helix and the entrepreneurial university, the relational social capital and value creation, and technology transfer and cultural differences. The facilitators were categorized as internal and external. The results obtained highlight the importance of fostering relational social capital and providing tax incentives to facilitate industry's pursuit of innovation through academia partnerships, and also show that collaborative barriers in RD&I may be overcome to some extent by starting with smaller projects and gradually increasing their complexity. Based on the findings outlined in this review, we propose various lines for future research.

Patterns and trends of university-industry research collaboration in Ghana between 2011 and 2020

“…Furthermore, in another breadth, given that a number of barriers plague collaboration between industry and university, quite a number of studies have devoted considerable efforts to investigating the factors that could drive or inhibit the operations of UIC (e.g. Rossoni et al, 2023;O'Dwyer et al, 2022) and have suggested possible ways by which these obstacles can be attenuated to ensure a successful UIC. These challenges, the literature suggests, if correctly managed, will have a positive effect on the perceived success of UIC, and if neglected, will tend to have a negative impact on making UIC a reality.…”

Exploring the entrepreneurial landscape of university-industry collaboration on public university spin-off creation: A systematic literature review

“…University-industry collaboration (UIC) refers to the interaction between different components of the higher education system and industry, with the primary aim of fostering the exchange of knowledge and technology in order to enhance the knowledge base of organisations [29,30]. The upsurge in collaborative activity is a direct result of converging pressures affecting both industry and academia.…”

“…In this dynamic partnership, academia serves as a source of creativity, teeming with young, inventive talent, while industry focuses on innovating and advancing new products, processes and services. These innovations not only improve the quality of human life, but also generate significant financial returns [29,35]. Within this framework, participants from universities and research institutes gain a better understanding of the challenges faced by companies.…”

“…Within this framework, participants from universities and research institutes gain a better understanding of the challenges faced by companies. The complexity of solving problems requires a joint effort, drawing on the expertise of knowledge creators and the resources provided by those with capital and means [29,36].…”

“…Returning to our research questions, Rq1,2 were typified by the datasets used and the typical methods employed to analyse the data in our comprehensive analysis. Our primary dataset was drawn from the Web of Science Core Collection, a vast and respected source of scientific publications [17,18,29,31,36].…”