How Academic Engagement Through Graduate Students Can Affect Firms ’ Search Capabilities for Innovation : A Micro-level Analysis of Firm Employed PhD Students in Engineering

This paper contributes to the recent stream of literature developing the concept of ? academic engagement with industry? , which focuses not on commercialization but on the knowledge networks between university and industry. We do so by exploring the firm side of such interactions, and empirically conduct a study of how firm employed PhD students do micro-level activities, which in turn help develop knowledge networks. A firm employed PhD student is a person who is enrolled at the university as a PhD student while at the same time being employed at the firm. We extend an existing conceptual framework, which suggests that there are two pathways whereby collaborative research between university and industry may impact innovation outcomes within firms. We find that microlevel activities develop and support the indirect pathways of academic engagement, and propose this may be conceptualized as organizational routines underlying search capabilities How Academic Engagement Through Graduate Students Can Affect Firms’ Search Capabilities for Innovation: A Micro-level Analysis of Firm Employed PhD Students in Engineering Abstract This paper contributes to the recent stream of literature developing the concept of “academic engagement with industry”, which focuses not on commercialization but on the knowledge networks between university and industry. We do so by exploring the firm side of such interactions, and empirically conduct a study of how firm employed PhD students do micro-level activities, which in turn help develop knowledge networks. A firm employed PhD student is a person who is enrolled at the university as a PhD student while at the same time being employed at the firm. We extend an existing conceptual framework, which suggests that there are two pathways whereby collaborative research between university and industry may impact innovation outcomes within firms. We find that microlevel activities develop and support the indirect pathways of academic engagement, and propose this may be conceptualized as organizational routines underlying search capabilities.This paper contributes to the recent stream of literature developing the concept of “academic engagement with industry”, which focuses not on commercialization but on the knowledge networks between university and industry. We do so by exploring the firm side of such interactions, and empirically conduct a study of how firm employed PhD students do micro-level activities, which in turn help develop knowledge networks. A firm employed PhD student is a person who is enrolled at the university as a PhD student while at the same time being employed at the firm. We extend an existing conceptual framework, which suggests that there are two pathways whereby collaborative research between university and industry may impact innovation outcomes within firms. We find that microlevel activities develop and support the indirect pathways of academic engagement, and propose this may be conceptualized as organizational routines underlying search capabilities.