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    Long-term innovation outcomes of university-industry collaborations: the role of ‘bridging’ vs ‘blurring’ boundary spanning practices

    Rossi, Federica and De Silva, Muthu and Baines, Ning and Rosli, Ainurul (2022) Long-term innovation outcomes of university-industry collaborations: the role of ‘bridging’ vs ‘blurring’ boundary spanning practices. British Journal of Management 33 (1), pp. 478-501. ISSN 1045-3172.

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    Abstract

    We explore the link between the long-term innovation outcomes of university-industry collaborations (UICs) - in particular, whether the UIC has led to further exploitative or exploratory innovation - and the adoption of boundary spanning practices. This extends the current literature on UICs, which has mainly focused on short-term innovation outputs and on the features of boundary spanning individuals and teams. Relying on a unique, purposefully constructed evidence base combining information from 95 semi-structured interviews with participants in 75 UICs and from publicly available databases, we find that adopting a ‘bridging’ approach to boundary spanning – through formal and structured practices and communication procedures – increases the likelihood that the UIC will lead to further exploitative innovation. A ‘blurring’ approach to boundary spanning – through informal practices to de-emphasise boundaries between organisations – increases the likelihood that the UIC will lead to further exploratory innovation. The choice of each boundary spanning approach is in turn influenced by the collaborators’ prior experience with internal knowledge creation and collaborative knowledge co-creation. Management and policy implications are discussed.

    Metadata

    Item Type: Article
    Additional Information: This is the peer reviewed version of the article, which has been published in final form at the link above. This article may be used for non-commercial purposes in accordance with Wiley Terms and Conditions for Self-Archiving.
    Keyword(s) / Subject(s): university-industry collaborations (UICs), boundary spanning, Knowledge Transfer Partnerships (KTPs), exploitative innovation, exploratory innovation
    School: Birkbeck Faculties and Schools > Faculty of Business and Law > Birkbeck Business School
    Research Centres and Institutes: Innovation Management Research, Birkbeck Centre for
    Depositing User: Federica Rossi
    Date Deposited: 28 Oct 2020 12:58
    Last Modified: 02 Aug 2023 18:04
    URI: https://eprints.bbk.ac.uk/id/eprint/41058

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