What makes industry–university collaboration succeed? A systematic review of the literature

Industry–university collaborations (IUCs) have received increased attention in management practice and research. The need for innovation in today’s business environment and the ambition of policymakers to commercialize academic knowledge intensify this trend. However, although research has devoted considerable effort to finding the determinants of success for interfirm collaboration, much less is known about IUCs. This article presents the results of a systematic review of the literature on the collaboration between industry and universities. We perform an extensive analysis of research published on industry–university collaboration projects with the objective of distilling factors that influence the success of such collaborations. We propose a novel conceptual model, which synthesizes our empirical results, and use it to organize and categorize influencing factors and their interrelationship within the collaboration process. Based on our review of existing literature, we identify an agenda for future research in this domain.