University-industry Knowledge Transfer: A Comparison of Business Schools and their Interactions with Industry in Developed and Developing Countries

This research project aims to discover the key differences between business school university-industry collaborations in developed and developing countries. It can be argued that there is "increased pressure from government and industry to engage more actively in the innovation process, which is resulting in closer linkages between universities and industry" (Dooley and Kirk, 2007 p. 330). Research in this area is important, largely because an increase in knowledge about university-industry collaboration can "allow policy-makers to reach better judgements of the strengths and weaknesses of types of collaboration, profiles of individuals, organisational specialism and universities" (Perkmann et al., 2013 p. 431). A study into the differences business schools encounter in university-industry collaborations between business schools in developed countries and business schools developing countries could be fruitful. This may be useful is because it could give insight into how university-industry collaboration could be improved in developing countries (Attia, 2015). Furthermore, with respect to academic entrepreneurship and university technology transfer, it has been argued that "further research is required to examine the extent and nature of business schools' involvement in the development of entrepreneurship related to the transfer of technology in universities" (Wright et al., 2004 p. 243). This research project aims to measure numerous variables, from the medium through which business school academics cooperate with organisations within university-industry collaboration to the motivation to engage in business school university-industry collaboration, focusing on developed and developing countries. This research project will adopt a mixed-methods research design, collecting both quantitative and qualitative data.