Today it is generally accepted that innovation, knowledge creation, and the diffusion of new knowledge are crucial factors for economic growth at the regional, national, as well as supra-national level, and that successful innovation is increasingly based on interactions and collaborative...

Academic inventions have to be transferred to industry to become an innovation. Scientists face multiple options for this transfer, from informal knowledge transfers to patents, licences, and spin-offs. These transfer channels require different efforts and inhibit different degrees of...