From Traditional to Modern Universities: The Ambiguousness of Researcher Incentives in a University-Industry Collaboration Perspective

This paper reports a longitudinal multi-case research project encompassing 72 semi-structured interviews carried out in 2011 and 2012. The interviews covered topics of the collaboration between university and industry, why they were engaged, who benefitted from it, the initial motives and final results. In addition the interviews tried to focus on whether the industry understood the motives of the university to engage in collaboration and vice versa. Focusing on whether the performance measurements used by politicians and universities today enhances the collaborations or obstruct them. The paper concludes that the performance management used today in universities in form of publications is overlooking the industries’ need of growth from the university knowledge. Hence motivating the scientists to engage in collaborations only from the university point of view and only to a limited extent concerning about the companies.