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

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-emphasize boundaries between organizations – 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.