Reflecting on Reviewing: Management Research on Intermediary Organizations for Industry-Academia Collaboration

Abstract

There is a growing consensus that knowledge creation at universities and other research institutions is the engine of the economy and society. Industry-academia collaborations began in earnest with the enactment of the Bayh-Dole Act in the U.S. in 1980, and in Japan, technology transfer organizations (TTOs) have been established nationwide in anticipation of the enactment of the Law for the Promotion of Technology Transfer from Universities in 1998. The purpose of this study is to focus on management research within the overall research on industry-university collaboration, and to gain an overall picture of the research field through a systematic review. The results of this preliminary survey indicate that management research in the field of industry-academia collaboration as a whole is an unexplored topic. In addition, it became clear that there is a lack of accumulated research on intermediary organizations in particular. Implications for future research are to systematically organize findings on the positioning and role of intermediary organizations and identify valid perspectives for management research, taking into account the pathways to commercialization of university-originated technologies and the diversity of research fields.

Keywords

• industry-academia collaboration
• intermediary organizations
• technology transfer
• academic entrepreneurship
• systematic literature review