Success Factors in Higher Education-Industry Collaboration: A case study of collaboration in the engineering field

This paper addresses the question of what potential success factors are relevant when developing and managing higher education-business partnerships. To shed light on this question, the paper presents a review of research literature on the possible success factors in university-industry relations. To shed further light on the factors identified in the literature, this paper reports on an empirical study of cross-sector collaboration between four regional universities and energy firms in Norway. The empirical study should be seen as a "relevance check" of the factors identified in the extant literature on university-industry collaboration, within the particular context of education-related partnerships. Based on the review and case studies, implications for management and further research are discussed.