This paper identifies practices that can facilitate knowledge transfer in university-industry (U-I) research partnerships by systematically reviewing extant literature. We aim to contribute to the theoretical development in the field of academic engagement and propose that knowledge transfer provides a valuable perspective. We started our review with identifying barriers and facilitators of knowledge transfer. Extant literature identified knowledge differences and differences in goals resulting from different institutional cultures as important barriers to knowledge transfer. They result in ambiguity, problems with knowledge absorption and difficulties with the application of knowledge. Trust, communication, the use of intermediaries and experience are found as facilitators for knowledge transfer that help to resolve the identified barriers. Our analysis offers practical advice for the management of academic engagement. Finally, we identified questions for future research based on inconsistencies in extant research and open questions we encountered during our analysis.

Purpose -The purpose of this paper is to investigate the effect of board diversity on the extent to which firms invest in R&D.Design/methodology/approach -empirical analysis of 175 firm-year observations for Fortune 500 firms in high tech industries and the four different indications of diversity of their boards.Findings -Boards that can tap into a diversity of sources for information can be expected to make better decisions. Diversity in a team and a board can, however, also impede team performance.Measuring the diversity of boards in four different ways, two of which are person-related (age and gender) and two information-based (education and tenure), we analyze which kind of diversity ensures that the firm governed by a board will invest more R&D. We find, unexpectedly, that tenure diversity leads to firms being less innovative, while education diversity and gender diversity make firms more innovative. Gender diversity positively moderates education diversity as well, strengthening the effect found. We discuss the implications of our findings for management and society.Originality/value -This study conceptually differentiates between 2 information-based and 2 personrelated indications of board (team) diversity, theoretically elaborate on the effects they have, and provide empirical evidence for their effects.

Can the knowledge base of an economy be measured? In this study, we combine the perspective of regional economics on the interrelationships among technology, organization, and territory with the triple-helix model, and offer the mutual information in three dimensions as an indicator of the configuration. When this probabilistic entropy is negative, the configuration reduces the uncertainty that prevails at the systems level. Data about more than a million Dutch companies are used for testing the indicator. The data contain postal codes (geography), sector codes (proxy for technology), and firm sizes in terms of number of employees (proxy for organization). The configurations are mapped at three levels: national (NUTS-1), provincial (NUTS-2), and regional (NUTS-3). The levels are cross-tabled with the knowledge-intensive sectors and services. The results suggest that medium-tech sectors contribute to the knowledge base of an economy more than high-tech ones. Knowledgeintensive services have an uncoupling effect, but less so at the high-tech end of these services.