“The Triple-Helix collaboration: Why do researchers collaborate with industry and the government? What are the factors that influence the perceived barriers?”

This paper addresses four questions: What is the extent of the collaboration between the natural sciences and engineering researchers in Canadian universities and government agencies and industry? What are the determinants of this collaboration? Which factors explain the barriers to collaboration between the university, industry and government? Are there similarities and differences between the factors that explain collaboration and the barriers to collaboration? Based on a survey of 1554 researchers funded by the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC), the results of the multivariate regressions indicate that various factors explain the decision of whether or not to collaborate with industry and the government. The results also differed according to the studied fields. Overall, the results show that the variables that relate to the researcher’s strategic positioning, to the set-up of strategic networks, to the costs related to the production of the transferred knowledge and transactions explain in large part the researcher’s collaboration. The results of the linear regression pointed to various factors that affect collaboration with researchers: research budget, university localization, radicalness of research, degree of risk-taking culture and researcher’s publications. Finally, the last part of the paper presents the results, and what they imply for future research and theory building.

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