The performance of university-industry collaborations : empirical evidence from the Netherlands

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Collaboration objectives and the location of the university partner: evidence from the Piedmont region in Italy

This study examines firms' decisions to collaborate with universities in their region as opposed to non-regional universities, focusing on the role of collaboration objectives. Through a survey of a representative sample of manufacturing firms in the Piedmont region (Italy), we find that firms seeking business advice are more likely to collaborate with regional universities while firms seeking R&D support and testing and analysis services are more likely to collaborate with both regional and non-regional universities. The partner university's location is endogenous to the level of investment in the collaboration; and the collaboration objectives provide good instruments. Some implications for regional policy are discussed

Performance of university-industry collaborations, qualitative and quantitative evidence from the Netherlands

This paper aims at identifying the elements that positively affect the performance of university-industry collaborative projects. We look in particular at the level of scientific and technological achievements of the project, the degree to which firms make use of the knowledge developed, and the subjective evaluation of both involved parties. Moreover, this paper examines the factors affecting the different perceptions of barriers to university-industry collaboration. To undertake this research, we rely on both in-depth data collected on 30 cases of university-industry collaboration to the development of a specific knowledge and/or technology, as well as on Dutch survey data collected via two questionnaires - one addressing industrial researchers and the other academic researchers. Our results suggest that project’s performance depends on the type of knowledge being developed, on the origin of the projects’ idea, and on the level and type of university-industry interaction during the project. We find that university-driven projects, although being more risky and troublesome, allow obtaining unexpected fruitful scientific and technological developments, with high spillovers to several other fields. Industry-driven projects, in turn, are more likely to benefit participating firms. Absorption of knowledge developed in collaborative projects depends on factors residing mainly on the industrial side. Firms need to invest in capability building and in knowledge transfer, especially in labour mobility. For both industry and university, earlier experiences have a positive effect on the evaluation of their collaboration. They also avoid overemphasising barriers to collaboration. Still, when both parties join the project with different expectations, they are likely to evaluate differently their project. This is also the case when projects results are of different value for the respective parties

Technological learning environments and organizational practices Cross sectoral evidence from Britain

International audienceThis study explores the co-occurrence of technological and organizational learning processes by analysing the adoption and use of four types of Human Resource Management (HRM) practices, rewarding, problem-solving, top-down management and decentralization, in the 1990s, across different technological learning environments. Using a sample of British workplaces, we show that the level of use of diverse HRM practices, aimed at creating different learning incentives, is persistently heterogeneous across technological learning environments, suggesting that HRM forms an essential part of the technological learning structure of firms

New instruments in innovation policy : the case of the department of trade and industry in the UK

This paper studies how investments in knowledge codification may be used as innovation policy tools, in a non-interventionist policy environment. Analysing statistically and historically the case of the UK’s Department of Trade and Industry, from the early 1980s to 2002, the paper shows how knowledge codification can be used as policy-instrument for restructuring the design, characteristics and implementation of public innovation support as well as for developing new national competitive competences. This paper suggests that within a context of outsourced policy implementation and execution, the continuous upgrade of public support for innovation requires that both governmental department and external suppliers engage in ‘learning-by-codifying’

Catalysts and barriers : factors that affect the performance of university-industry collaborations

This paper explores whether and how different organizational structures of the collaboration, reflecting different involvement and power of both parts across different phases and activities of the collaboration, lead to different performance outcomes Our analysis considers various dimensions of performance, from the perspective of both partners, and relies on 30 in-depth, semi-structured case studies of universityindustry collaborative projects. Among other things our results suggest that while different involvement of the parts in the origin and execution of the R&D collaboration influence the scientific and technological achievements of the collaboration and likelihood of use developed knowledge, imbalance power in the appropriation of early or later collaboration’s results is associated with negative evaluations from both parts. In particular, collaborations based on university-invented patents technologies get more negative evaluations

Sources of differences in the pattern of adoption of organizational and managerial innovations from early to late 1990s, in the UK

This paper explores empirically how the pattern of adoption of an organizational and managerial innovation changes as diffusion occurs. In particular, the paper investigates whether and how differences over time in the patterns of use of organisational innovation are related to changes in the characteristics of the innovation in terms of its functionality and relative complementarity with other innovations, as well as to changes in the needs and capabilities of firms. For this purpose, firm level data from the British Workplace Industrial Relations Survey, in 1990 and 1998, are used