The Initiation of University-Industry Collaboration in Emerging Economies: Drivers of Academic Researchers

Governments in emerging economies promote university-industry collaborations as an important source of innovation and economic growth. We focus our research on individual academic researchers because they play a crucial role in initiating and supporting collaborations with companies. In this paper, we investigate the reasons why academic researchers in emerging economies initiate university-industry collaborations and address the following research question: “What are the drivers for academic researchers to initiate University-Industry collaborations in Emerging Economies?”  We start from the existing literature on drivers of academic researchers to initiate university-industry collaborations and formulate propositions on these drivers’ relevance in the context of emerging economies. To answer our research question and test our propositions, we conduct a survey among Vietnamese researchers. We launch a pilot test of our questionnaire in three Vietnamese universities and identify the main drivers of academic researchers for initiating university-industry collaborations in Vietnam.