Investigating the factors that diminish the barriers to university-industry collaboration

Although the literature on university-industry links has begun to uncover the reasons for, and
types of, collaboration between universities and businesses, it offers little explanation of ways to
reduce the barriers in these collaborations. This paper seeks to unpack the nature of the
obstacles to collaborations between universities and industry, exploring influence of different
mechanisms in lowering barriers related to the orientation of universities and to the transactions
involved in work with university partners. Drawing on a large-scale survey and public records, this
paper explores the effects of collaboration experience, breadth of interaction, and interorganizational
trust on lowering different types of barriers. The analysis shows that prior
experience of collaborative research lowers orientation-related barriers and that greater levels of
trust reduce both types of barriers studied. It also indicates that breadth of interaction diminishes
the orientation-related, but increases transaction-related barriers. The paper explores the
implications of these findings for policies aimed at facilitating university-industry collaboration.