Autor(es):
Haase, Heiko 
; Franco, Mário ; Fernandes, António B.
Data: 2012
Identificador Persistente: http://hdl.handle.net/10198/9044
Origem: Biblioteca Digital do IPB
Assunto(s): Universities-industry collaboration; Technology transfer; Academic staff; Spin-off; Portugal
Descrição
It is widely recognised that a country’s development, in terms of innovation and productivity, is greatly
influenced by the character and intensity of interaction between the science and business communities. Despite
this importance, there is still a lack of understanding regarding the underlying factors that drive the transfer of
knowledge and technology. In particular, only a few empirical studies have addressed the issue of exploring the
attitudes and behaviours of academic staff in this process. This paper aims to fill this research caveat. Its main
objective is to investigate the influence of academic staff’s socio-demographic and educational characteristics on
university-industry collaboration. According to our objectives and to test these hypotheses, we decided on a
mixed method. At a first stage, we performed a quantitative study, based on data gathered from a questionnaire
applied to the overall population of academic staff at Bragança Polytechnic Institute in Portugal. The empirical
study was carried out in 2011 and covered the total population of academic staff at BPI. We received 123 valid
questionnaires, yielding a response rate of 23.7%. For data analysis, we applied descriptive statistics and logistic
regression. At a second stage, a qualitative approach was chosen to evaluate university-industry collaboration,
consisting of an exploratory semi-structured interview with the owner-manager of a recently created local spin-off
from this higher education institution. The results reveal that age and gender are significantly related to the
propensity to collaborate with industry. For instance, the probability of male academic staff collaborating with the
business community is around 3.5 times higher than it is for females. Furthermore, we found that the level of
formal qualification of academic staff and supervision of work placements had no influence, while the
school/faculty academic staff belong to is significantly correlated with industry cooperation. Nevertheless, the
interviewee considered the existence of curricular work placement as crucial. Overall, from our quantitative and
qualitative data, there is a preference for exploitation of knowledge more in academic than in business terms. We
present several theoretical and practical implications.
