Open Access

This report presents the findings related to the barriers and drivers of university-business cooperation (UBC) that have been found to exist in Europe. These results derive from a fifteen and a half month study on the cooperation between higher education institutions1 (HEIs) and public and private organisations in Europe. The study was conducted by the Science-to-Business Marketing Research Centre, Germany (S2BMRC) for the DG Education and Culture at the European Commission (EC) during 2010 and 2011. The main components of the project are in-depth qualitative interviews with 11 recognised UBC experts as well as a major quantitative survey. The survey was translated into 22 languages and sent to all registered European HEIs (numbering over 3,000) in 33 countries during March 2011. Through this, a final sample population of 6,280 academics and HEI representatives was achieved, making the study the largest study into cooperation between HEIs and business yet completed in Europe. Further, 30 good practice UBC case studies have been created to provide positive examples of European UBC.