Barriers to Strategic University-Industry Partnership Development: A strategic alliance perspective on how factors evolve through key phases of partnership development

Abstract

This paper identifies the barriers affecting the development of bilateral strategic partnerships formed between research universities and large R&D intensive firms and pinpoints when, during the key phases of the partnership journey, specific barriers matter most. Such partnerships, formed for the longer term at the organisation-level, are becoming increasingly important for delivering these firms’ R&D and innovation objectives. Yet despite this, there is little evidence on how different factors affect their emergence and development. We develop and implement a survey of universities and firms to investigate these issues, integrating insights from the strategic alliance and university-industry partnerships barriers literatures. We confirm the importance of the many factors identified in the university-industry literature as also affecting the development of strategic university-firm partnerships. Further, we show additional factors as important: adequacy of governance and management structures; sufficiency of partnership-focused support; and the ability of partnerships to adapt and reconfigure. We also show that key factors such as contract and IP negotiations – often highlighted in both academic and policy studies – are largely limited to the formation phase. By contrast, other barriers persist or even intensify as partnerships emerge, develop and mature. Finally, we demonstrate the value of deploying network analysis techniques to studying partnership barriers in investigating how combinations of factors change through the different phases of the partnership journey. Our findings offer new insights into the workings of strategic university-industry partnerships and have important implications for practitioners and policymakers looking to develop more effective approaches to supporting them.