It is within the context of the on-going Greek economic crisis, that policy makers and stakeholders have been widely accepting that the limits between the academic and the business community should be overcome, for instance in terms of further supporting substantial R&D networking, mobility, spin-offs, etc., and establishing institutional links between the main actors, namely higher education institutes (HEIs) and public research centers/institutes, public administration/regions and business sector, are prerequisites for improved knowledge transfer critical for restructuring domestic productive patterns and growth model. In this paper, we explore this proposition by examining the actual links established between HEIs and businesses a result of the National Strategic Reference Framework 2007-2013, the latter being the foremost public R&D financial mechanism supporting R&D activities. Empirical data was extracted from calls and projects managed by the General Secretariat of Research and Technology, while input from the Monitoring Information System dataset of the Ministry of Development had been also taken into account. Employing for the first time a micro-level analysis on R&D-related calls and projects, we show that linkages groomed on behalf of the state between the academic and business world needs to be further improved. As such, this article complements previous findings on the topic.