How do university‐industry collaborations benefit innovation? Direct and indirect outcomes of different collaboration types

Abstract This paper explores the extent to which firms perceive to benefit from university‐industry collaborations in their innovation processes, building on survey data from 232 Norwegian firms. We find that firms experience not only direct innovation benefits from collaborations, but also indirect benefits in the form of closer proximity to universities, which can in turn improve future collaboration. We compare the reported outputs from various types of collaboration, finding that firms engaging mainly in research‐oriented interactions more often report that collaborations result in innovation than those engaging in education‐oriented or more informal collaborations. However, education‐oriented and informal collaborations are equally important for building cognitive, organizational, institutional and social proximities between firms and universities.