University-industry interaction combines several layers of actors, states and effects. People make choices, based on their individual characteristics, at different stages of a scientific career, in a highly internationalised profession. Tensions arise when university administrators and managers need to strike a balance among different promotion instruments, or when the university or public research organisation tries to solve the trade-offs between long- and short-term relationships, or among new management practices. Impacts are related to scientific agendas, the economic returns for firms or the societal benefits. This book adopts a people-tension-impact approach to identify key insights, by combining qualitative and quantitative research, established and novel methodologies, and different geographic settings. The chapters in this volume provide new perspectives on university-industry interactions related to gender biases, entrepreneurial involvement of PhD students and the role of international mobility. They also focus on how the positive impacts of university-industry interactions coexist with unresolved tensions linked to policy combinations, long-term contractual relationships, management practices and organisational strategies.

Chapters 4 and 6 are available open access under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License via link.springer.com.

1. Introduction: People, tensions and impact in university interactions

2. PhDs with industry partners - assessing collaboration and topic distribution using a text mining methodology
3. The heterogeneous impact of academic patent characteristics on firms' economic performance
4. Rethinking the role of productive interactions in explaining SSH research societal impacts: towards a conceptual framework for productive science system dynamics
5. The policy mix to promote university-industry knowledge transfer: a conceptual framework
6. Determinants of contract renewals in university-industry contract research: going my way, or good Sam?-7. The relationship between university management practices and the growth of academic spin-offs
8.Public research organizations and technology transfer: flexibility, spatial organization and specialization of research units
9. Every woman is a vessel: an exploratory study on gender and academic entrepreneurship in a nascent technology transfer system
10. The effects of the academic environment on PhD entrepreneurship: new insights from survey data.-11. International academic mobility and entrepreneurial opportunity identification: a resource-based view.