Kotiranta Annu, Tahvanainen Antti, Kovalainen Anne, Poutanen Seppo
Business Finland, Finland.
Finnish Forest Industries Federation, Finland.
Heliyon. 2020 Mar 13;6(3):e03404. doi: 10.1016/j.heliyon.2020.e03404. eCollection 2020 Mar.
Academic scientists' engagement with industry is a central mechanism in university-industry knowledge transfer and the development of collaborative research. However, most empirical studies are limited to researchers in technical disciplines. We extend the analysis beyond engineers to include broader disciplinary fields, including humanists, economists, medicine, biosciences and cross-disciplinary scientists. Our findings suggest that cross-disciplinary researchers and researchers in technical sciences engage in more industry interaction than their peers. The motivations for the choice of research area play an important role in industry collaboration. Furthermore, we identify three types of industry interaction (interaction modes) among researchers: 1. educational interaction, consisting of conferences or seminars, corporate training programs, or supervising thesis work; 2. research interaction, consisting of shared publications, research-related consulting, public research programs and contract research; 3. integrated interaction, consisting of joint research in shared premisesand employment contracts with companies. Of these, the educational and research interaction modes (1 and 2) are motivated by the possibility of individual academic advancement. Integrated interaction (3) is rare and significantly correlates with only one of the three types of industry cooperation motivations: commercialization of research findings. We conclude by identifying future research needs, opportunities for methodological improvement and policy interventions.
学术科学家与产业界的合作是大学与产业界知识转移及合作研究发展的核心机制。然而，大多数实证研究仅限于技术学科的研究人员。我们将分析范围从工程师扩展到更广泛的学科领域，包括人文主义者、经济学家、医学、生物科学和跨学科科学家。我们的研究结果表明，跨学科研究人员和技术科学领域的研究人员比同行更多地参与产业互动。研究领域选择的动机在产业合作中起着重要作用。此外，我们确定了研究人员之间的三种产业互动类型（互动模式）：1. 教育互动，包括会议或研讨会、企业培训项目或指导论文工作；2. 研究互动，包括共同发表论文、与研究相关的咨询、公共研究项目和合同研究；3. 综合互动，包括在共享场所的联合研究以及与公司的雇佣合同。其中，教育和研究互动模式（1和2）的动机是个人学术进步的可能性。综合互动（3）很少见，并且仅与三种产业合作动机之一显著相关：研究成果的商业化。我们通过确定未来的研究需求、方法改进的机会和政策干预措施来得出结论。
