Rogaland region, located at the southwestern coasts of Norway, has undergone tremendous economic development during the last half a century due to becoming the base for petroleum industry of this most oil-rich country of Europe. The history of higher education sector in the region has been very much shaped and influenced by that economic development history. In this article, we try to examine to what extent and in what form the main university of the region, University of Stavanger (UiS), has contributed to the economic developments in the region by corresponding to the educational, research and innovation needs of its main economic sectors. After describing the highlights of the economic and academic developments in the region, we use established frameworks from the regional innovation systems and university-industry relations literature in order to analyze whether and how the UiS has played a role in addressing the regional innovation system requirements of the sectors deemed currently as priority sectors for Rogaland. Based on that, we draw policy implications for better harmony between regional innovation system policies and higher education policies.
This paper examines the extent to which firms perceive different dimensions of proximity to be important for the formation of their interactions with universities. Furthermore, it investigates whether the importance of the different types of proximities varies depending on the type of interaction-be it about knowledge exploration, knowledge exploitation, competence enhancement, advice-seeking or marketing. Using data from a survey of 1,200 Norwegian firms, we find that most managers believe cognitive, institutional, social and geographical proximity were important for their decision to collaborate with university partners and that the importance of proximity types varies depending on the contents of the interaction.
Rhoda was a RUNIN research fellow at the University of Lincoln and has a PhD on the 'Microfoundations of Academics Networks: Initiation, Evolution and Context'. She also holds a BSc. in Biochemistry from the University of Ghana and an MSc. in Innovation and Entrepreneurship from the University of Oslo. She has industrial experience working as a supply chain quality specialist in Nestle Ghana. She is a visiting researcher at the University of Lincoln's International Business School and currently works as a business development manager at a startup company, Wattero AS in the Oslo area.
Firms and universities interact with each other despite several barriers hindering their collaboration, such as distances in their worldviews, organizational structures and cognitive capabilities. This suggests that these distances can be bridged in some instances and proximity between the actors may help in the formation of university-industry collaborations (UICs). Proximity, being a multidimensional concept – including geographical and a variety of non-geographical dimensions such as cognitive, organizational, institutional and social – plays a bridging role between the two worlds of academia and industry and facilitates the formation of university-industry linkages. UIC, as well, represents an umbrella term that covers many different types of channels and refers to a broad range of activities as well as outputs of the interactions. Moreover, firms are driven by a variety of different motivations that influence their decision to engage in UICs, which adds to the comprehensiveness of UIC concept. This thesis, thus, examines UICs from the proximity perspective and aims to increase the understanding of proximity in UICs. It analyses the role, importance and influence of proximities with regards to UICs, which differ greatly in terms of their contents, outputs and motivations. Proximity, through its geographical and non-geographical dimensions, helps in the formation of collaborations between firms and universities. Yet, the influence and importance of different forms of proximity depend heavily on the UIC channels in question and the initial motivation of the firm to interact with universities. Additionally, while proximity dimensions influence UIC outputs generated, the collaboration process might also have an impact on changing the proximity between actors. Despite the overall acknowledgement of the multidimensional character of the proximity concept, it is generally assumed that geographical proximity is a strong facilitator of interactions between academia and industry. However, several UIC activities, such as co-publishing, can be geographically dispersed since the collaboration of actors over large distances is possible. In addition, multinational enterprises (MNEs) present a rather unique configuration for the analysis of the importance of geographical proximity in UICs owing to their distributed organizational structures across different geographical locations. This dissertation, hence, examines the importance of geographical proximity for MNE’s collaboration with universities. Through a case study of copublication partnerships in the MNE-university setting, the findings demonstrate that the propensity to collaborate with regional vs. nonregional universities varies by the location of subsidiaries. While this may be caused by the differences in the influence of geographical proximity for different subunits within an MNE, it may well be due to some other factors which lead to different outcomes for the geography of UICs. This suggests a need for the inclusion of non-geographical dimensions of proximity in order to explain better the influence of proximity dimensions in UICs alongside the geographical dimension. Previous studies have seldom taken into consideration the multidimensionality of the proximity concept of and UICs. They rather limited their scope of analysis by covering a limited number of proximity dimensions and UIC channels. This implies that most of the prior studies falls short of providing a thorough analysis of proximity dimensions in UICs. Therefore, following the proximity framework suggested by Boschma (2005), this dissertation presents a novel and comprehensive model that examines the significance of different proximity dimensions across UIC processes. With a quantitative methodology applied via the econometric examination of a survey conducted with 1201 firms, the empirical results highlight the variation in the significance of proximities by UIC channels and outputs. The findings indicate that cognitive proximity and institutional proximity have greater importance for knowledge exploration UICs, while geographical proximity matters less for this type of collaborations. For UICs oriented towards knowledge exploitation, social proximity is more important, whereas organizational proximity matters less for advice-seeking collaborations. There is a growing interest in the dynamic aspect of proximity, implying that interaction processes increase the proximity levels between the actors and proximities co-evolve during interaction processes since they are interrelated and interdependent (Balland et al., 2015; Broekel, 2015). However, the dynamics of proximity have not been examined extensively in UIC context. In this dissertation, this aspect has been addressed by looking at the outputs of UIC processes from the perspective of learning effects represented by non-geographical dimensions of proximity as intangible outputs. Drawing on the use of survey data, the results indicate a close relationship between the formalization of interactions and tangible outputs – such as patents – as well as the contribution of interaction processes in the development of non-geographical proximity regardless of the UIC types. Additionally, the motivations of firms in engaging in UICs vary across firms, and this has implications for who they choose to collaborate with. Different motivations may affect whether the firms collaborate with the university partners located either in proximity or at a distance. Similarly, the existence of non-geographical proximities may affect the spatiality of UICs, suggesting an interplay between geographical and nongeographical aspects of proximity. Yet, these two factors – motivations and non-geographical proximities – have not been examined within the scope of a single study. This dissertation, however, investigates whether and how firm motivations and non-geographical dimensions of proximity affect the geographical aspect of interactions between firms and universities. The results illustrate that UICs motivated by the need for capacity development and relying on cognitive proximity are less sensitive to distance, while geographical proximity matter more for firms intending to create societal impact and building their collaboration on institutional and social proximity.
The chapter examines collaboration with universities from the perspective of firms, drawing on survey data from 1200 Norwegian firms. Around one in five firms collaborate with a university. The firms provide various motives for collaborating, including access to knowledge, access to students and staff, and improving their reputation. The collaborations span a wide variety of different mechanisms, including research, teaching and other activities. Frequently used indicators of university-industry interaction, such as joint research projects and contract research, account for less than half of all collaborations, while informal consultations and training or educational programmes emerge as important areas of collaboration. In two-thirds of the cases, the local university is the most important partner for university-industry interaction, while the national technical university NTNU accounts for more than half of the most important inter-regional connections. In total, 93 percent of firms involved in university-industry interaction have connections to their local universities. However, half of them also interact with universities in other regions of Norway, and 30 percent with foreign universities. Hence, local universities can act as bridges that also enable firms to reach distant research groups.
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