Universities as Internationalization Catalysts: Reversing Roles in University–Industry Collaboration

University–industry (U-I) collaboration is vital to the development of society. However, this important interaction has become something of a caricature whereby a sequential and unidirectional relationship exists, with universities creating knowledge and industries commercializing it. We address this issue by using the triple helix (TH) perspective and the network-revised Uppsala model of internationalization to demonstrate how this relationship can be reversed. We present an embedded longitudinal case study of a UK–China innovation programme, run by a UK university with the aim of supporting the development of 62 collaborative innovation projects between 58 UK small and medium enterprises and Chinese organizations. The results reveal a pressing need to revisit universities’ third mission: the transfer of academic knowledge to industry. The findings demonstrate universities’ role as internationalization catalysts for firms engaged in U-I collaboration. This signals an important and underexplored component of the TH perspective. The knowledge exchange type in U-I relationships shows a possible reversal in firm and university roles, where knowledge and technology are contributed by firms, and access to markets is orchestrated by universities, which become internationalization platforms.