Assessing the impact and antecedents of university scientific research on firms' innovation commercialisation

Abstract

University-firm links have stimulated a lot of attention. In fact, with the increasing knowledge and technologies created within university laboratories, firms have identified business opportunities by accessing the knowledge developed by external actors and commercialising universities' inventions. In this case, they adopt a knowledge acquisition strategy to foster innovation, reducing risk and exploiting new technological opportunities. This underlines a shift in the role of universities from education providers to scientific knowledge and technologies producers in the current knowledge-driven economy. In this context, the main goal of this paper is to assess the impact of knowledge acquisition on firms' innovation commercialisation, with a specific focus on knowledge developed by university scientific research. By applying hierarchical regressions on a sample of Assessing the impact and antecedents of university scientific research 89 185 Italian knowledge-intensive firms (KIFs), the findings indicate that firms benefit from research partnerships with and services from universities, when they also seek knowledge from other counterparts and when they possess higher levels of internal absorptive capacity.

Open innovation practices and related internal dynamics: case studies of Italian ICT SMEs

“…Five SMEs approached this OIP through an informal partnership while three SMEs developed a formal agreement. CEOs suggested that coordination with academic/scientific partners is difficult to achieve, because of the mismatch of goals and priorities and approaches, often resulting in time lags (Dezi et al , 2018). In this regard, it is necessary to organise periodical meetings to keep pace with relationships and avoiding delays, especially in ICT sectors where products/services become obsolete fast.…”

Evaluation of the Impact of Open Innovation and Acceleration Programs on Research and Development Performed by Universities

“…The transformation of knowledge with open science practices in parallel to OI used by universities increases their societal impact, [29] and [30] including in education [33] and [32]. Some factors seem to influence on innovation partnership with universities: effectiveness and speed; [11], connections, funding, organisational culture, internal characteristics, resource availability, relationships [37] and geographical proximity [7].…”

“…Such fragmentation could lead to a player specialisation, therefore decreasing innovation diversity, competition and the societal impact of Universities' R&D [6]. However, this scenario is uncertain as long as a shift in the role of universities from education providers to scientific knowledge and technology producers in the current knowledge-driven economy [7]. In this context, in which companies and universities are collaborating through different types of work, new university roles are required [8].…”

What drives university-industry collaboration? Research excellence or firm collaboration strategy?

“…Firms that maintain R&D collaborations with suppliers or customers increase the chance of establishing new partnerships with other actors in the value chain (Belderbos, Gilsing, Lokshin, Carree, & Fernández Sastre, 2018). Firms that cooperate with external partners are also more likely to establish and reap benefits from research collaboration with universities (Dezi, Santoro, Monge, & Zhao, 2018;Segarra-Blasco & Arauzo-Carod, 2008). Hence, we expect a firm's embeddedness and interaction within external networks to influence its willingness and ability to collaborate with universities.…”