Do the propensity and drivers of academics' engagement in research collaboration with industry vary over time?

TL;DR

This paper examines how the likelihood and main factors influencing Italian academics' industry research collaborations have changed over two periods, providing insights for policy development and evaluation.

Contribution

It offers a comparative analysis of academic-industry collaboration propensity and drivers over time using an inferential model on Italian university data.

Findings

Propensity to collaborate varies over time.

Main drivers of collaboration change between periods.

Policy implications for fostering industry-academic research.

Abstract

This study is about public-private research collaboration. In particular, we want to measure how the propensity of academics to collaborate with their colleagues from private firms varies over time and whether the typical profile of such academics change. Furthermore, we investigate the change of the weights of main drivers underlying the academics' propensity to collaborate with industry. In order to achieve such goals, we apply an inferential model on a dataset of professors working in Italian universities in two subsequent periods, 2010-2013 and 2014-2017. Results can be useful for supporting the definition of policies aimed at fostering public-private research collaborations, and should be taken into account when assessing their effectiveness afterwards.