Proximity and impact of university-industry collaborations. A topic detection analysis of impact reports

The probability to initiate university-industry collaborations (UICs), their intensity and quality, are influenced by the proximity between the collaboration partners. However, little is known about the relationship between collaborators' proximity and impact of UICs. Building on an original database of 415 UICs in the United Kingdom, we analyse the association between collaborators' proximity and the extent to which UICs generate economic, social and knowledge impact. We find that geographical and institutional proximity are substitutes in relation to economic impact, cognitive and institutional proximity are substitutes in relation to knowledge impact, and social impact is associated with cognitive and institutional distance.