Universities-industry collaboration: A systematic review

The collaboration between universities and the industry is increasingly perceived as a vehicle to enhance innovation through knowledge exchange. This is evident by a significant increase in studies that investigate the topic from different perspectives. However, this body of knowledge is still described as fragmented and lacks efficient comprehensive view. To address this gap, we employed a systematic procedure to review the literature on universities industry collaboration (UIC). The review resulted in identifying five key aspects, which underpinned the theory of UIC. We integrate these key aspects into an overarching process framework, which together with the review, provide a substantial contribution by creating an integrated analysis of the state of literature concerning this phenomenon. Several research avenues are reported as distilled from the analysis. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.