We expect to provide insights of whether (and how) chairs contribute to bring closer the supply-side (academics) and demand-side (top managers), boosting interactions and knowledge exchange. Against this background, our academic contribution is threefold: (1) analysing an understudied phenomenon (university chairs as a mechanism for facilitating university-industry interactions), (2) in a field (management) blamed by its disconnection from the business domain and where empirical evidence is barely non-existent, (3) by providing a holistic approach that includes both demand and supply sides of collaborations.