Industry–university collaboration in rural and metropolitan regions: What is the role of graduate employment and external non-university knowledge?

Bridging the Gap between Firms and Universities: Firm Links with Research and Technology Organisations in Different Types of Regions

“…In connection to the second research question, Model 2 showed that the association between collaboration with RTOs and industry-university collaboration varied with regional location, yet not in a way that fits the expectations formulated in Hypothesis 2. Collaboration with RTOs was not more strongly associated with industry-university collaboration among firms in peripheral regions, compared to firms in the Copenhagen metropolitan region, despite the David Fernández Guerrero differences in organisational diversity between the two types of regions (Guerrero, 2020;Tödtling & Trippl, 2005, 2015Zukauskaite et al, 2017). A possible explanation for this finding might relate precisely to the differences in organisational diversity between peripheral regions and the Copenhagen metropolitan region.…”

“…Peripheral regions are relatively sparsely populated locations with few or no urban agglomerations. Compared to more densely populated locations, these regions tend to host a narrow variety of organisations, whether these are part of the regional innovation system's knowledge generation and diffusion subsystem, such as RTOs or public research institutes, or the knowledge application and exploitation subsystem, such as customers, suppliers and competitors (Guerrero, 2020;Tödtling & Trippl, 2005, 2015Zukauskaite, Trippl, & Plechero, 2017). They also tend to host firms operating in sectors traditionally not likely to draw on university research as part of their innovative activities (Isaksen & Karlsen, 2013;Tödtling & Trippl, 2015).…”

“…Metropolitan regions present the opposite picture with large urban agglomerations and a broad variety of organisations in the knowledge generation and diffusion subsystem, including multiple universities (Guerrero, 2020;Tödtling & Trippl, 2015;Trippl et al, 2015).…”

“…Only firms that reported the conduct of innovative activities 1 were included in the analysis, due to the focus of the study on collaboration on innovation and because the Danish Research and Innovation Survey itself only enquires of firms that reported on activities about collaboration on innovation. When constructing the dataset, the approach followed was the same as that was followed in previous work on industry-university collaboration in different types of regions in Denmark by the author (Guerrero, 2020).…”

“…They are also more likely to host firms operating in sectors traditionally not likely to David Fernández Guerrero draw on university research as part of their innovative activities (Isaksen & Karlsen, 2013;Tödtling & Trippl, 2015). Nevertheless, evidence from Scandinavian countries shows that a higher percentage of firms in peripheral regions collaborate with universities compared to their metropolitan counterparts (Guerrero, 2020;Jakobsen & Lorentzen, 2015). Firms in peripheral regions need to overcome longer distances than their metropolitan counterparts in order to collaborate with universities (Johnston & Huggins, 2016).…”