Proximity across the distant worlds of university–industry collaborations

Abstract

This paper examines the extent to which firms perceive different dimensions of proximity to be important for the formation of their interactions with universities. Furthermore, it investigates whether the importance of the different types of proximities varies depending on the type of interaction—be it about knowledge exploration, knowledge exploitation, competence enhancement, advice‐seeking or marketing. Using data from a survey of 1,200 Norwegian firms, we find that most managers believe cognitive, institutional, social and geographical proximity were important for their decision to collaborate with university partners and that the importance of proximity types varies depending on the contents of the interaction.