Why distance matters for collaboration with industry

UK universities used to focus their attention on local firms when cooperating with the business sector. Here’s how that is changing.

Looking back at previous decades, universities in the United Kingdom have traditionally focused their attention on local firms when cooperating with the business sector. But the outcome of a recent comparative study, funded by the Centre for Global Higher Education and applying a radically new measurement approach, suggests that links with industry have gone global in recent years.

What is going on?

This large-scale study entitled Globalisation, Localisation and Glocalisation of University-Business Research Cooperation: General patterns and trends in the UK university system examined thousands of research publications co-produced by 48 of the largest research universities in the country.

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Professor Robert Tijssen

Robert Tijssen is Professor Emeritus of Science and Innovation Studies at Leiden University in the Netherlands and was a CGHE Co-Investigator on the former Project 1.3, ‘Higher education’s engagement with industry: metrics and indicators of boundary spanning UK academics’.