Abstract:The role of universities in product innovation has received considerable attention over the past decade. However, little is known about how the type of formal university-firm interaction predicts innovative performance and the degree of novelty of new products. This research differentiates two forms of firm high-relational interaction with universities: R&D contracting and cooperation. We exploit the panel structure of a dataset of 5,858 Spanish manufacturing firms with fixed-effects models. The empirical analysis finds that, although both contracting and cooperation predict product innovative performance, the two activities differ in the degree of novelty of new product outcomes. The implications are that the codified nature and asymmetric scope of R&D contracting is more suitable for exploitative innovation, resulting in product innovation that is incremental in nature. On the other hand, the possibility to exchange and create tacit knowledge and the explorative nature of R&D cooperation provide firms with the opportunity to better access the broad knowledge base of universities, leading to product innovations with a higher degree of novelty.

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This broad study empirically compares the returns to different open innovation approaches, namely forms of pecuniary acquisition and non-pecuniary sourcing, on both product and process innovation in low-tech service and manufacturing firms. A fixed-effects analysis reveals differing patterns of the effectiveness of open innovation strategies across sectors and type of innovation outcome, along with decreasing returns from being “too open”. In general, the purchase of intangible intellectual property and broad search breadth have greater effects on product innovation, whereas the returns to knowledge embodied in physical artefacts and to drawing deeply from external sources are greater for process innovation. Overall, external sources of knowledge more strongly predict innovation in low-tech service firms than in the manufacturing sector. The final section considers implications for managers and policy makers.

To my many mentors, coaches, and role modelsIndividually, we are one drop.Together, we are an ocean.-Ryunosuke Satoro i ABSTRACT Determinants of and Returns to Innovation Activities which Span Organizational Boundaries: Empirical Studies on a Panel of Spanish FirmsFirms interact increasingly with agents that are external to their organizational boundaries in order to create new product and process innovations. The three empirical studies comprising this dissertation explore the determinants of and returns to externally-oriented innovation activities. All three studies estimate econometric models on a panel survey of Spanish firms.Study 1 investigates the determinants that predict whether manufacturing firms use internal means, collaboration, or external development as the main mode of new product development. Drawing from constructs based in transaction cost theory, the resource-based view, and industrial organization theory, the results illuminate the nature of collaboration and contracting and differences in the governance of innovation.First, market uncertainty tends to lead firms into collaborative but not external development, while firms are more likely to collaborate under conditions of technological uncertainty. Second, we find an inverted u-shaped relationship with the likelihood of collaborative development and a negative relationship with external acquisition as a function of internal R&D capacity, and therefore of firm resources. This reflects a tension between the 'need' (or lack thereof) to find external sources of innovation and the search for 'complementary' sources of innovation afforded by higher internal research capacities. Finally, contrary to theory the importance of spillovers at the industry level has no predictive power while higher use of appropriability mechanisms favours internal development.Study 2 examines the firm-level innovation performance effects of R&D cooperation and contracting with universities. We find that both interaction mechanisms are important for new product development in a sample of manufacturing firms. However, the results ii indicate that R&D cooperation with universities predicts product innovation with a high degree of novelty, whereas R&D contracting with universities predicts product innovation that is less novel. These results shed light on the nature of R&D cooperation and contracting and contribute to a growing literature on the role of university interactions in commercial product innovation.Study 3, set in the context of low-tech sectors, consists of a comparative analysis that hypothesizes how the returns to pecuniary and non-pecuniary external sourcing activities differ along two dimensions: (1) product and process innovation and (2) manufacturing and service industries. It finds that the pecuniary acquisition of intangible intellectual property is more important for product innovation, while the acquisition of knowledge embodied in artefacts is a stronger predictor for process innovation. Likewise, the 'breadth' of non-pecuniary sourcing is more impor...