Factors influencing the collaboration between universities and companies from Greek industrial estates, as a mean of regional development

The industrial estates of Greece and their companies create poles of regional development and local innovation centers. The development of collaboration between universities and local business centers can benefit the local economy and society. The current research, spreads in 100 companies from 19 industrial estates of Greece. It aims to indicate important factors that influence the collaboration between universities and companies from greek industrial estates. The data were collected during 2013, through a structured questionnaire. Selected variables from the questionnaire were used in order to build a logistic regression model. The results indicate that the degree of collaboration between universities and companies is positively influenced by the number of employees in the company and by the degree of collaboration between the company and the local administration institutions. On the other hand, it is negatively influenced by the size of the industrial estate that the company operates and by the lack of company’s information knowledge.