Engaging the scholar: Three types of academic consulting and their impact on universities and industry

We present a conceptual framework of academic consulting and explore its impacts on universities and the benefits to innovating firms. We distinguish between three types of academic consulting: opportunity-driven, commercialization-driven and research-driven. Exploring the implications of these different types, first, we postulate that consulting has limited impact on biasing academic research towards more ‘applied’ themes. Secondly, while we expect research-driven consulting activities to be positively associated with research productivity, opportunity-driven consulting will have a negative impact. Thirdly, we differentiate between different functions of academic consulting for different types of firms.