Industry-university collaboration in different types of regions: The role played by non-metropolitan university actions, graduate employment and external knowledge sourcing in industry-university collaboration

Since the 1980s, policymakers have promoted universities’ involvement in regional economic development. Increasingly since then, universities have been incentivised to develop a range of third-mission activities to transfer their knowledge to local firms, adapting their educational and research activities to support innovation in regional firms in the process. At the same time, increasing regional disparities in innovative activity and economic development suggest that policies promoting collaboration between universities and regional firms should be suited to different types of regions; factors that are relevant to industry–university collaboration in one type of region might not be as relevant in another type of region. Thus, the present thesis addresses the following research question: “To what extent do the roles of key factors associated with university–industry collaboration differ across types of regions?” This thesis includes four papers, which use quantitative and qualitative data for Denmark. One of the papers uses qualitative data for Denmark, Portugal and Norway.