The relationship between the university and the company: identification of thematic communities

This paper analyzes the link between the university and the firm from a neo-Schumpeterian evolutionary theoretical perspective. The aim of the paper is to identify the thematic communities present in the literature dealing with the university-business relationship, with emphasis on the focuses of interest of this literature and on the currently emerging themes. For this purpose, social network analysis and text mining tools were used. The present contribution is distinguished from other reviews by the use of large volumes of data that made it possible to observe aggregate trends in scientific production. Six thematic communities were detected in the literature: technology parks, entrepreneurial university, triple helix, transfer channels, geographical perspective and open innovation. Once these communities were determined, the characteristics of each of them were identified, as well as their linkages, differences and limitations, in order to understand the processes of knowledge transfer.