Understanding university-industry collaboration from the perspective of proximity: insights from a case study in China

Universities are increasingly considered as crucial actors for innovation and regional development through university-industry collaborations. Extant research suggests that the impact of knowledge transfer is largely related to the multi-dimensional proximities between universities and knowledge recipients. However, majority of them approached the issue of proximity by treating collaborations between universities and their industrial partners as geographically static. Our case study looks at one Chinese research university which adopted an innovative outreach solution by setting up off-campus institutional arrangements to mitigate the problem caused by the geographical constraint, exploring how such entrepreneurial effort can pose an impact on the various dimensions of proximity. By doing so, this paper aims to enrich the knowledge of university entrepreneurship, elucidate the dynamic nature of proximity in the context of university-industry collaborations and draw practical implications for the promotion of such collaborations at large.