An empirical analysis and a model of industry-university collaborations based on knowledge transfer

In this paper, an analysis is made of industry-academia linkages by focusing oil the structure of knowledge transfer. Problems that occur in research collaborations between universities and industry may be due to various factors such as different perspectives and needs. In this paper., we aim to identify these problems so that we may find a balanced mechanism of promoting industry-university collaboration by focusing oil knowledge transfer. Interviews and a pilot questionnaire were carried out for the analysis. Having interviewed about a dozen academics, well known for their active linkages with industry, a web-based questionnaire analysis using multiple choice questions was carried out. The 73 respondents included both academics from Tokyo Institute of Technology as well as their collaborative partners in industry, allowing us to analyze similarities as well as differences in their perspectives. in part 1 of the questionnaire, the questions were arranged to obtain an understanding of the facts behind industry-academia collaboration, how the collaboration started, perceived merits, demerits, outcome expected by the collaboration, policies towards patents etc. In part 2, knowledge was classified into eight categories and the questions were arranged to obtain information on the conditions under which one was willing to provide or acquire knowledge. A knowledge incentive model was constructed to identify the different needs of industry and academia for each category of knowledge regarding knowledge absorption and provision.