UNIVERSITY-INDUSTRY LINKAGES AND THE INFLUENCE OF THE CHARACTERISTICS OF ACADEMIC RESEARCH GROUPS

There is a growing interest on university-industry linkages in the field of innovation studies, since university can be an important source of information for firms' innovative efforts. In this way, this paper aims to exam how the characteristics of academic research groups influence their interactions with firms. Using data from a survey with research groups in Brazil, an empirical model to evaluate how the characteristics of research groups impact their interactions with firms was estimated. Main results show that research groups with better academic performance, larger and linked to bigger university departments interact more with firms. Additionally, Engineering and Agricultural Sciences research groups also interact more. The main contribution of the paper is to present a better understand of the main factors that shape university-industry linkages in Brazil and how the characteristics of research groups influence their interactions.