Introduction: research topic Interactions between Public Research Organisations (PROs henceforth) and Industry are at the forefront of policy agendas world-wide as they are instrumental to foster technological development and economic competitiveness. Interactions between PROs and industry can also help attenuate the pressures that the current global economic crisis place on public sector research budgets – especially in countries with high levels of debt –by providing external private funding, directly oriented to the generation of marketable innovations. The scope of this paper is to deepen the understanding of PROs-Industry links with reference to the antecedents of their formation and the impact of these links on the world of scientific knowledge production. In broad terms this endeavour involves the analysis of the process through which knowledge producers (i.e. scientists) both organize within their own community and interact with industry to generate scientific knowledge.