University-industry interaction and project's performance on innovation : perspective of university's researcher

Abstract

This research studies the effects of University-Industry Interaction (UII) on innovation project performance from the perspective of university researchers. The main objectives are: 1) to identify the main factors of the researchers’ project performance that will benefit private firms, 2) to investigate the power of UniversityIndustry Interaction (UII) on project performance, and 3) to test the model of University-Industry Interaction (UII) and project performance as well as the relationship of all the factors in the model. The author distributed questionnaires to faculty members in two universities: Chulalongkorn University and Mahidol University. The respondents were researchers in the fields of Science and Technology and Engineering. In total, 296 respondents answered the questionnaires. For the research methodology, several quantitative statistics were used in this study including descriptive statistics, t-test, ANOVA, and Structural Equation Modeling (SEM). The results of the statistical testing showed that the factors affecting the project performance either directly or indirectly through UII are: UII, Information and Communication Technology capabilities and social network. The indirect impacts are the firm characteristics, researcher characteristics, and social network. UII has the most influence out of all of the constructs that have a direct impact on project performance. It can be concluded that all constructs have a positive impact on the performance of the project and have different values depending on the factors and relationships. This dissertation concludes by providing recommendations and direction for future research. The results of this study can be used to provide recommendations to the three main parties in the triple helix model, namely government, industry (private firms) and university.