University–industry linkages and academic engagements: individual behaviours and firms’ barriers. Introduction to the special section

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

Protocol of the Healthy Brain Study: An accessible resource for understanding the human brain and how it dynamically and individually operates in its bio-social context

The endeavor to understand the human brain has seen more progress in the last few decades than in the previous two millennia. Still, our understanding of how the human brain relates to behavior in the real world and how this link is modulated by biological, social, and environmental factors is limited. To address this, we designed the Healthy Brain Study (HBS), an interdisciplinary, longitudinal, cohort study based on multidimensional, dynamic assessments in both the laboratory and the real world. Here, we describe the rationale and design of the currently ongoing HBS. The HBS is examining a population-based sample of 1,000 healthy participants (age 30-39) who are thoroughly studied across an entire year. Data are collected through cognitive, affective, behavioral, and physiological testing, neuroimaging, bio-sampling, questionnaires, ecological momentary assessment, and real-world assessments using wearable devices. These data will become an accessible resource for the scientific community enabling the next step in understanding the human brain and how it dynamically and individually operates in its bio-social context. An access procedure to the collected data and bio-samples is in place and published on https://www.healthybrainstudy.nl/en/data-and-methods. https://www.trialregister.nl/trial/795

Cooperation between Russian research organizations and industrial companies: factors and problems

The study is focused on the cooperation of Russian companies with research organizations in implementing R&D projects during technological innovation. Taking into account behavioral changes, authors carry out a micro-level analysis based on empirical data of executive survey of over 600 Russian industrial firms (2011—2012) and about 350 research organizations and universities (2012). The authors emphasize the key factors of firms’ demand for outsourcing R&D reveal the main barriers to the development of university-industry cooperation and their particularities for different cooperation actors. The analysis shows that there is a positive relation between the size of a company and R&D outsourcing. As for the factor of age, the highest cooperation activity of Russian firms is observed among enterprises founded over 20 years ago. As far as concernes cooperation activity of research organizations, large ones are significantly more likely to cooperate with business. A common prerequisite for research organizations' R&D cooperation with business is sufficient academic ranking. Business and science evaluate differently various obstacles to effective cooperation. For firms, the main problems are the inflated costs of national R&Ds, insufficient research organizations’ orientation at company needs, and low quality of developments. As for representatives of research organizations, they mention as barriers primarily the lack of companies' receptivity to innovation and inadequate information about promising developments. Businesses are more optimistic about cooperation with science if they already have a relevant experience of interaction. In the case of research organizations we observe a different pattern: most problems seem more significant to organizations conducting R&D in business interests

Leveraging knowledge as a competitive asset? The intensity, performance and structure of universities’ entrepreneurial knowledge exchange activities at a regional level

© 2016, The Author(s). Universities are no longer considered to be isolated islands of knowledge, but as institutions increasingly engaged with a range of external partners through entrepreneurial activities. This paper examines the associations between the intensity and performance of knowledge exchange activities undertaken in UK universities with non-academic actors. Drawing on data concerning the structural factors of interactions of universities in the UK with external partners, the paper sheds further light on the nature of these activities through a prism of competitive and uncompetitive regions in order to better understand how universities may be able to leverage both their knowledge and partnerships more effectively as competitive assets. On the one hand, it is found that academics in uncompetitive regions are more intensively engaged in entrepreneurial activities but generate less income from them than their counterparts in competitive regions, suggesting that there are differences in the income-generating capacity of academics across regions. On the other hand, academic knowledge is found to be more strongly bounded within a certain distance in uncompetitive regions whilst geographical distance seems less of a hindrance to academics in competitive regions

Protocol of the Healthy Brain Study: An accessible resource for understanding the human brain and how it dynamically and individually operates in its bio-social context

The endeavor to understand the human brain has seen more progress in the last few decades than in the previous two millennia. Still, our understanding of how the human brain relates to behavior in the real world and how this link is modulated by biological, social, and environmental factors is limited. To address this, we designed the Healthy Brain Study (HBS), an interdisciplinary, longitudinal, cohort study based on multidimensional, dynamic assessments in both the laboratory and the real world. Here, we describe the rationale and design of the currently ongoing HBS. The HBS is examining a population-based sample of 1,000 healthy participants (age 30-39) who are thoroughly studied across an entire year. Data are collected through cognitive, affective, behavioral, and physiological testing, neuroimaging, bio-sampling, questionnaires, ecological momentary assessment, and real-world assessments using wearable devices. These data will become an accessible resource for the scientific community enabling the next step in understanding the human brain and how it dynamically and individually operates in its bio-social context. An access procedure to the collected data and bio-samples is in place and published on https://www.healthybrainstudy.nl/en/data-and-methods/access. Trail registration: https://www.trialregister.nl/trial/7955