University–industry linkages and academic engagements: individual behaviours and firms’ barriers. Introduction to the special section
本文回顾了大学-产业研究的最新进展，从个体学者激励、企业合作障碍及发展中国家瓶颈三个维度剖析学术参与概念，指出性别与非学术背景等被忽视的个体特征影响合作程度，并建议将学术参与拓展至更广泛的社会经济影响。
The article introduces the special section on “University–industry linkages and academic engagements: Individual behaviours and firms’ barriers”. We first revisit the latest developments of the literature and policy interest on university–industry research. We then build upon the extant literature and unpack the concept of academic engagement by further exploring the heterogeneity of UI linkages along a set of dimensions and actors involved. These are: (1) Incentives and behaviours of individual academic entrepreneurs; (2) Firms’ barriers to cooperation with public research institutions; (3) Individual behaviours, incentives and organizational bottlenecks in late developing countries. We summarize the individual contributions along these dimensions. There are overlooked individual characteristics that affect the degree of engagement of academics and scholars in cooperating with other organizations, of which gender and the non-academic background of individuals are most crucial. The notion of academic engagement should be enlarged to aspects that go beyond the commercialization or patenting of innovation, but embrace social and economic impact more at large. From the perspective of the firm, barriers to innovation might exert an effect on the likelihood to cooperate with universities and public research institutes, most especially to cope with lack of finance or access to frontier knowledge. We finally propose a research agenda that addresses the challenges ahead.