Why University-Industry Innovation Stalls in Transition Economies: New Study Points to Governance

In the global race to turn scientific research into economic growth, some countries face a puzzle that goes far deeper than a shortage of laboratories or talented researchers. A new open-access review published in Discover Sustainability argues that in transition economies—nations still shaking off the institutional legacies of conflict or authoritarian rule—the decisive factor in whether universities and companies can innovate together is not money, talent, or even ambition, but governance. The study, led by Dardane Nuka with Ines Troshani and Ketrina Cabiri Mijo of the European University of Tirana, examines Kosovo and Albania as illustrative cases and finds that university-industry collaboration in research and development remains fragmented, weakly institutionalized, and constrained by limited trust. The research was funded by the National Agency for Science, Research and Innovation, and its central message is stark: the machinery connecting academia, business, and government matters more than the individual parts themselves.

The authors built their analysis on a structured review of 57 peer-reviewed studies, integrating three established theoretical lenses: the Triple Helix Model, which describes the interplay of universities, industry, and government; the National Innovation Systems framework, which treats innovation as the product of interconnected institutions; and Governance Theory, which focuses on how relationships among actors are coordinated and steered. By weaving these perspectives together, the team set out to identify what distinguishes transitional settings from mature innovation systems such as those in Western Europe or North America. Their conclusion is that conventional models of university-industry collaboration, which typically assume well-functioning institutions as a starting condition, simply do not travel well to post-conflict and post-authoritarian environments. In those contexts, the institutions themselves are part of the problem.

The evidence assembled in the review points to a cluster of mutually reinforcing barriers. Weak institutional coordination means that universities, firms, and public agencies often operate in silos, with no effective body aligning their priorities. Fragmented policy frameworks leave research and innovation initiatives scattered across ministries and programs without coherent strategy. Limited mutual trust between academics and business leaders discourages the long-term commitments that joint research and development requires. Insufficient university autonomy and research capacity prevent institutions from acting as reliable partners, while misaligned incentives—where academic careers reward publications rather than applied outcomes, and firms demand short-term returns—undermine the willingness to cooperate on either side. Beneath all of this lie historically embedded institutional legacies that continue to shape behavior long after formal political transitions have occurred.

What makes these findings technically significant is the way the authors reframe the problem. Rather than treating governance as a fixed backdrop, they propose understanding it as a dynamic process: a sequence of institutional coordination, trust-building, policy alignment, and progressive consolidation of relationships among universities, industry, and government. In this view, institutional fragility and historical legacies are not obstacles to be overcome before collaboration can begin, but integral dimensions of the collaboration process itself. This context-sensitive collaborative governance perspective extends the Triple Helix and innovation-system approaches by foregrounding the mechanisms required for university-industry relationships to emerge, stabilize, and generate sustainable research and development outcomes in environments where those relationships have never functioned smoothly.

Kosovo and Albania serve as the study’s illustrative contexts, and their profiles are instructive for a much wider set of countries. Both are economies in transition, shaped by post-conflict or authoritarian legacies, with higher education sectors that have expanded rapidly but often without commensurate investment in research infrastructure or institutional autonomy. Firms in both countries tend to be small and medium-sized enterprises with limited internal research capacity, which means they have much to gain from academic partnerships but few resources to initiate them. Public institutions, meanwhile, frequently lack the coordination capacity to broker and sustain such partnerships. The result is an innovation ecosystem in which every actor has reasons to collaborate but no reliable framework for doing so—a situation the authors argue is characteristic of transitional economies more broadly.

The conceptual contribution of the paper lies in connecting previously fragmented strands of literature. Work on institutional governance, innovation systems, and university-industry relations has largely developed in parallel, with each field addressing a piece of the puzzle. By bringing them together, Nuka and colleagues establish a conceptual foundation for future empirical investigation in Kosovo, Albania, and comparable transition economies. This matters because empirical research in such settings has often imported frameworks designed for mature systems, producing findings that misdiagnose local realities. A framework that explicitly accounts for institutional fragility allows researchers to ask more precise questions: not merely whether collaboration exists, but what governance conditions enable it to emerge and endure.

The practical implications are equally concrete. For policymakers, the study argues for more coherent policies that align research, innovation, and industrial strategies rather than leaving them dispersed across agencies. For universities, it highlights the need for institutional capacity-building and greater autonomy so that academic institutions can act as credible, responsive partners. For industry stakeholders, it points toward trust-based partnerships built on realistic expectations and aligned priorities rather than one-off transactions. The authors emphasize that these interventions are interdependent: policy coherence without trust-building produces paper frameworks, while trust without institutional capacity produces fragile pilot projects that collapse when key individuals move on. Sustainable collaboration, in their account, requires progress on all fronts simultaneously.

The study also situates university-industry collaboration within the broader agenda of sustainable development, positioning well-governed research partnerships as a mechanism for advancing Sustainable Development Goals 4, 8, 9, and 17—covering quality education, decent work and economic growth, industry, innovation and infrastructure, and partnerships for the goals. This framing reflects a growing recognition that innovation-led development in emerging economies cannot be achieved by universities or firms alone. When collaboration functions, it channels academic knowledge into productive capacity, creates demand-driven research agendas, and builds the absorptive capacity that allows economies to adopt and adapt new technologies. When it fails, the result is a persistent gap between what universities produce and what economies need, reinforcing dependence on imported knowledge and limiting local innovation.

For the international research community, the paper offers a caution against one-size-fits-all innovation policy. Donor programs and national strategies alike have often assumed that establishing technology transfer offices, incubators, or matching funds will automatically generate collaboration, mirroring models that succeeded in mature systems. The Kosovo and Albania evidence suggests that such instruments underperform when the underlying governance relationships are absent. The authors’ framework implies that interventions should be sequenced and designed to build coordination capacity, trust, and aligned incentives first, creating the conditions in which conventional collaboration tools can then take root. As transition economies worldwide—from the Western Balkans to Central Asia—seek to convert expanding higher education systems into engines of innovation, this study provides both a diagnostic lens and a roadmap, arguing that the quality of governance relationships, not the mere presence of universities, firms, and public institutions, determines whether research and development collaboration can flourish and endure.

Subject of Research: Governance of university-industry R&D collaboration for innovation in transition economies

Article Title: Governance of university industry research and development collaboration for innovation in transition economies

Article References: Nuka, D., Troshani, I., & Mijo, K. C. (2026). Governance of university industry research and development collaboration for innovation in transition economies. Discover Sustainability. https://doi.org/10.1007/s43621-026-04736-y

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: 10.1007/s43621-026-04736-y

Keywords: university-industry collaboration, R&D governance, transition economies, innovation systems, Triple Helix model, Kosovo, Albania, institutional trust, sustainable development goals, research policy, Governance, university