Government and research funding bodies have increasingly emphasized the societal impact of research prompting the need for increased engagement between academic researchers and non-academic external partners. There are numerous benefits that this academic engagement brings to the collaborating partners. Such benefits include facilitating advancement in research, providing researchers access to resources, and the provision of opportunities for post-graduate student mentoring by industry partitioners. Increased levels of academic engagement also offer researchers opportunities to generate new scientific research ideas and questions, exploit new research opportunities, or even test research theories and findings that are aimed towards solving practical problems outside the academic domain. Academic engagement with external non-academic partners, while beneficial, also incurs costs and typically remains at the discretion of the individual researcher. The increasing demand for additional engagement with non-academic partners may increase pressure on academics as such interactions add to their research and teaching responsibilities. This thesis investigates why and how academics engage with non-academic collaborators, applying self-determination theory to explore their motivations and modes of interaction. Using snowball sampling technique, the study conducted nineteen qualitative interviews with academic researchers from diverse fields—social sciences, physical sciences, life sciences, engineering, medicine, and humanities—across several public universities in Ireland. The selection of interviewees was based on careful representation of both male and female researchers who are at different stages of their career, in different disciplines, and either currently are, or have been, actively engaged with non-academic external partners. The findings indicate that motivations and modes of engagement between academic researchers and non-academic partners are shaped by a mix of intrinsic and extrinsic factors, intertwined with personal, organizational, and policy-related institutional elements. The thesis argues for tailored strategies that consider these diverse motivations and contextual dynamics to enhance interactions within Ireland’s innovation ecosystem. Although this study has limitations, it outlines areas for further research and offers significant theoretical, managerial, and policy implications by enhancing understanding of academic researchers’ engagement behaviours.