Title: Value exchange in university-industry collaborations

Authors: Christian Nielsen; Jesper Chrautwald Sort

Addresses: Aalborg University, Business Model Design Center, Fibigerstræde 11, Room 58, Aalborg, 9220, Denmark ' Aalborg University, Business Model Design Center, Fibigerstræde 11, Room 58, Aalborg, 9220, Denmark

Abstract: Through a longitudinal research project of university-industry collaborations comprising 38 semi-structured interviews, this article studies the creation and exchanging of value in 25 university-industry collaborations. Initially, a distinction is made between philanthropic, transactional, and integrative collaboration archetypes and the application of a project stage model comprising contact, initialisation, process, and termination phases. The study distinguishes between collaborations involving companies and researchers, companies and students, or all three stakeholder types. The framework of the business model canvas is applied to analyse the value proposition from each of the three agent types. This provides understanding of the transfer of knowledge and points toward barriers to existing collaboration that negate the value flow during the process. This is especially the case with student-company collaborations, but it is also evident in researcher-company collaborations. Both value creation and value exchange appear strongest in the initialisation and process stages but are often perceived to occur in the termination phase.

Keywords: university-industry collaboration; industrial cooperation; value creation; value exchange; knowledge transfer.

DOI: 10.1504/IJTTC.2013.071345

International Journal of Technology Transfer and Commercialisation, 2013 Vol.12 No.4, pp.193 - 215

Accepted: 10 Mar 2015
Published online: 21 Aug 2015 *

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