University–industry interaction in Santa Catarina: evolutionary phases, forms of interaction, benefits, and barriers

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"University–industry interaction (U–I) acquires relevance to countries to the extent that they identify how scientific knowledge produced within universities enhances technological development in firms and facilitates innovations. Universities are invigorated by the possibility of new scie ntific investigations that these relationships provide. The objective of this article is to analyze the establishment and development of U–I interactions in Santa Catarina, Brazil, of four universities through evolutionary phases, forms of interaction, benefits, and barriers. A total of 38 in-depth inter views were conducted during the data collection stage. To support the analysis and presentation of results, the qualitative data analysis software Atlas/ ti, version 7.1.3 was used. The results pointed to non-linearity in the evolution of U–I interaction and demonstrate that most of the relationships between universities and firms are concentrated in traditional and services channels. Moreover, their interaction intensity is evident in the short term with the flow of knowledge being directed from universities to firms. With regard to benefits and barriers, the research results expand on the avenues outlined in the literature, which reflects some characteristics of this interaction type in Brazil, whose relationships are still new and do n ot yet have a solid trajectory. © 2016 Departamento de Administrac ̧ ̃ ao, Faculdade de Economia, Administrac ̧ ̃ ao e Contabilidade da Universidade de S ̃ ao Paulo – FEA/USP. Published by Elsevier Editora Ltda. This is an open access article under the CC BY license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/)."