University–industry collaboration in the technology development and technology commercialization stage: a systematic literature review.

Abstract

Purpose: As university–industry collaboration (UIC) is associated to transfer of knowledge and technology, this collaboration is an extremely important field of study for the world's economies that helps industries become more competitive. UIC will assist universities in fine-tuning universities' educational programs to match with the industrial demand. This study, thus, presents a systematic literature review related to UIC in technology development process and technology commercialization. Design/methodology/approach: The Scopus database is used to extract the relevant articles. First, in presenting the articles, four scientometric analyses are used to visualize the bibliometric clusters, namely articles and journals co-citation analysis, countries collaboration analysis and keywords co-occurrence analysis. Next, a qualitative approach is used to classify the articles according to the methodology used and type of research. Finally, a research trend and keywords' evolution based on keywords are also provided. Findings: Results of this study reveal that majority of the articles used qualitative approach and descriptive analysis to explain the knowledge flow between industries and universities. According to the research trend analysis, researchers in this field were moving from the knowledge-based economy topic (from 2010–2013) to product development (2014–2015), technology commercialization (2016–2017), open innovation (2018–2019) and then currently are focusing on the green entrepreneurship topic. Practical implications: This study is expected to facilitate scholars to uncover gaps in the literature of UIC. Originality/value: This study extends the use of scientometric analysis. The combination of “bibliometrix” R-package tool and VOSViewer software to perform the analysis is expected to give a new insight of doing the systematic literature review.