Strategic intent of university-industry transfer collaboration

This paper examines the rationales the firms collaborate with the universities. Using information from a mail survey, this study examines the optimal collaboration mode for conveying the firms´ strategic intents to interact with the universities. We test hypotheses from the knowledge-based view of the firm using information from a survey of 91 usable questionnaires out of 645 Taiwanese firms. Our empirical results suggest the firms tend to collaborate with the universities when they aim at `passive´ intents but it is less likely for firms to license in university technologies based on `proactive´ intents. The firms may collaborate with the universities by taking account of `efficiency-seeking, resource-seeking or internalization-seeking´ intent. However, the firms tend not to license in university technologies when they aim at resource-seeking or internalization-seeking intents.