KEY SUCCESS FACTORS FOR UNIVERSITY – INDUSTRY COLLABORATION IN OPEN INNOVATION

In the last years, globalization and competitiveness have increased organizations' concern on innovative ways of their operations development. Innovation has expended from an internal approach to an open one. Many government policies have encouraged greater collaboration between the three worlds that were once very separate: the private and public research, business and/or industrial partners (as a structure for wealth creation) and education. All three, can cover virtuous circles to produce successful innovation. In this context, universities have extend their traditional roles or primary functions of education and research, to new one; entrepreneurship university or the knowledge based university are new approaches that give a new meaning and content to the traditional education role. Having these ideas as background, the paper presents the results of a theoretical and experimental research done with the support of three representative public high education institutions in Romania. The research aims to identify and compare the most key success factors of universities in order to discover and define the organizational behavior dimensions that support collaboration with industry and/or business entities in open innovation. The research done is based on the analysis of national reports (indicators) on the research and development activity and on the scientific reports of the three universities considered in the case study. The research results consists of university behavior dimensions framework (inventory) that facilitate their collaboration with business and/or industrial partners by innovative knowledge transfer processes in the context of a win-win relation.

The research described was financed by the national project: Researches based on Knowledge Management Approach Concerning Industry–University Collaboration in the Open Innovation Context (UNIinOI). This work was undertaken through the Partnerships in Priority Domains Programme-PN II, developed with the support of MEN-UEFISCDI, Project no. 337/2014 in Romania.