Title: Making innovative use of academic knowledge to enhance corporate technology innovation impact

Authors: Sigvald Harryson, Sandra Kliknaite, Rafal Dudkowski

Addresses: Lund School of Economics, Baltic Business School of Kalmar University, Kalmar Nyckel, Kalmar SE-391 82, Sweden. ' Lund School of Economics, Baltic Business School of Kalmar University, Kalmar Nyckel, Kalmar SE-391 82, Sweden. ' Lund School of Economics, Baltic Business School of Kalmar University, Kalmar Nyckel, Kalmar SE-391 82, Sweden

Abstract: This paper reviews 100 papers on the topic of Industry–University (I/U) collaborations to identify the drivers and main-barriers to such collaborations. It reveals that the greatest challenges from the companies| point-of-view reside in steering the collaborative project towards business objectives, and internalising the results for corporate technology innovation impact. Our review also reveals that there is only limited advice in the literature on how to handle these challenges. New knowledge is developed through deduction from theory and induction from qualitative in-depth studies with ten leaders of innovation in high-tech industries. The most relevant case is described in this paper – illustrating how Bang and Olufsen (B&O) spun off their core technology into a separate company so as to radically improve their steering and internalisation of academic knowledge in this area. Managerial conclusions are drawn from the theoretical framework and the case to suggest how to explore and exploit academic knowledge for global technology innovation impact.

Keywords: high technology innovation; weak ties strong ties; networking; exploration; exploitation; academic knowledge; industry–university collaboration; industrial collaboration; high tech firms; business objectives; Bang and Olufsen; Sweden; innovation impact; technology management; technological innovation; universities.

DOI: 10.1504/IJTM.2007.013504

International Journal of Technology Management, 2007 Vol.39 No.1/2, pp.131 - 157

Published online: 02 May 2007 *

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