Shaping the formation of university-industry research collaborations: what type of proximity does really matter?

Research collaborations between universities and industry (U-I) are considered to be one important channel of potential localised knowledge spillovers. These collaborations favour both intended and unintended flows of knowledge and facilitate learning processes between partners from different organisations. Despite the copious literature on localised knowledge spillovers, still little is known about the factors driving the formation of U-I research collaborations and, in particular, about the role that geographical proximity plays in the establishment of such relationships. Using collaborative research grants between universities and business firms awarded by the UK Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC), in this paper we disentangle some of the conditions under which different kinds of proximity contribute to the formation of U-I research collaborations, focussing in particular on technological complementarity among the firms participating in such partnerships.university-industry research collaborations, proximity, geography, industrial clustering, technological complementarity

Academic Entrepreneurship: What are the Factors Shaping the Capacity of Academic Researchers to Identify and Exploit Entrepreneurial Opportunities?

This paper aims at improving our understanding of the attributes of academic researchers that influence the capacity to identify and exploit entrepreneurial opportunities. We investigate a number of factors highlighted in the literature as influencing the entrepreneurial activities undertaken by academics. Our results show that identification and exploitation of entrepreneurial opportunities are shaped by different factors. While identification of commercial opportunities is driven by prior entrepreneurial experience and the excellence of the academic work, exploitation of entrepreneurial opportunities is driven by the extent of previous collaboration with industry partners, cognitive integration and prior entrepreneurial experience.Academic entrepreneurship; Opportunity identification; Opportunity exploitation; Spin-offs; Patenting; University-business collaboration

Persistent Knowledge Specialisation and Intra-Industry Heterogeneity: an Analysis of the Spanish Pharmaceutical Industry

This paper aims to contribute to the analysis of within industry inter-firm variety. Building upon the knowledge-based theory of the firm (Nelson and Winter, 1982; Penrose, 1959; Fransman, 1994), this paper develops two themes. First, the analysis of intra-industry heterogeneity: why do firms that operate in the same industry differ, and why are such differences persistent? Second, the paper investigates the extent to which higher performance is associated with the capacity of firms to expand their knowledge base (rather than with their initial conditions). The main contribution of the paper is empirical, based on a data source consisting of information on documents published in scientific international journals by Spanish pharmaceutical firms. The empirical results support the argument that the firm's knowledge base is a main driver of persistent heterogeneity within industries on the one hand, because of the systematic variety in terms of how firms articulate and organise their research activities and their background knowledge, and on the other hand, because of the positive correlation between the firms' knowledge diversification and performance.Firm heterogeneity, Knowledge diversification, Bibliometric analysis, Spanish pharmaceutical industry

Lowering barriers to engage in innovation: evidence from the Spanish innovation survey

The literature on innovation studies has extensively examined the main drivers of innovation activity, while putting less attention on factors that are crucial in order to foster competition dynamics, as well as to attenuate systemic failures to innovation. This paper aims to filling this gap by distinguishing between firms facing deterring barriers to innovation (i.e. those barriers that deter firms from engaging in innovation activities) and firms confronting revealed barriers (i.e. those barriers that are experienced by firms alongside their engagement in innovative activities). Drawing upon the literature on innovation studies, we propose a set of hypotheses on which factors are likely to attenuate deterring and/or revealed barriers to innovation (e.g. firm size, firm age, human capital, etc.). We built a longitudinal dataset derived from four waves of the Spanish Innovation Survey (2004-2007) in order to examine the impact of the proposed factors on three types of obstacles to innovation: cost, knowledge and market barriers. Results reveal that: first, knowledge and market related obstacles play a much stronger role as deterring barriers than cost-related obstacles; second, firm size and human capital available at firms play a significant role in attenuating deterring barriers to innovation, though only the former has a significant impact on alleviating revealed barriers.

The spatial profile of university-business research partnerships

IAREG (Intangible Assets and Regional Economic Growth).-- WP1 Working Papers: Knowledge accumulation processes and regional growth.University-industry linkages have long been at the centre of academic and policy attention. In spite of the copious literature on different aspects of such linkages, there is still rather inconclusive evidence on both the specific nature of the interactions between universities and businesses and their regional/spatial dimension. This paper focuses on one particular type of linkage between university and business – joint research partnerships – and addresses two specific issues. Firstly, it investigates the extent to which research quality and geographical proximity bear an influence on the intensity of university-industry collaborations. Secondly, it explores the factors affecting the spatial profile (i.e. proximity versus distance) of university-business partnerships. On the basis of an original database on collaborative research grants awarded by the UK Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) – integrated with other information sources – our findings generally support previous results highlighting the importance of geographical proximity in shaping university-industry collaborations. Yet, they indicate clearly that the spatial configuration of university-industry linkages is far from being a simple and uniform phenomenon, calling for greater caution when trying to apply “onesize-fits-all” and “picking winners” policy strategies.The research leading to these results has received funding from the European Community's Seventh Framework Programme (FP7/2007-2013) under grant agreement n° 216813.Peer reviewe

Simultaneous embeddedness in different networks and its effect on scientific knowledge generation: evidence from Spanish scientists

Trabajo presentado a la EU-SPRI Conference: "Science and Innovation Policy: Dynamics, Challenges, Responsibility and Practice", celebrada en Manchester (UK) del 18 al 20 de junio de 2014.Introduction: research topic Interactions between Public Research Organisations (PROs henceforth) and Industry are at the forefront of policy agendas world-wide as they are instrumental to foster technological development and economic competitiveness. Interactions between PROs and industry can also help attenuate the pressures that the current global economic crisis place on public sector research budgets - especially in countries with high levels of debt -by providing external private funding, directly oriented to the generation of marketable innovations. The scope of this paper is to deepen the understanding of PROs-Industry links with reference to the antecedents of their formation and the impact of these links on the world of scientific knowledge production. In broad terms this endeavour involves the analysis of the process through which knowledge producers (i.e. scientists) both organize within their own community and interact with industry to generate scientific knowledge.Peer Reviewe

What hampers innovation? Evidence from the UK CIS4

barriers to innovation, innovative firms, non-innovators

Knowledge from businesses to universities: an investigation on the two-way knowledge transfer in university-business partnerships

Trabajo presentado a la Triple Helix VII International Conference: "University, Industry and Government Linkages" celebrada en Madrid (España) del 20 al 22 de Octubre de 2010.Peer reviewe

Investigación traslacional e innovación médica: el caso de las redes CIBER

Dossier Científico.El modelo de investigación traslacional, con sus fortalezas y debilidades, está siendo ampliamente adoptado por la mayoría de agencias de salud pública, para reorientar los recursos financieros hacia investigaciones con un potencial impacto clínico más alto. Los autores nos explican cómo y presentan los resultados de una encuesta que determina la participación de los investigadores biomédicos en actividades relacionadas con la innovación médica y el impacto que estas pueden tener sobre los pacientes y el conjunto de la sociedad.Peer Reviewe

Connections matter: how personal network structure influences biomedical scientists engagement in medical innovation

Trabajo presentado a la DRUID Society Conference on "Entrepreneurship - Organization - Innovation" celebrada en Copenahgue (Dinamarca) del 16 al 18 de junio de 2014.In this study, we analyze the determinants of biomedical scientists? participation in various types of activities and outputs related to medical innovation. More specifically, we argue that scientists occupying brokerage positions among their contacts will in a more favorable position to deliver medical innovation outcomes, compared to scientists embedded in more dense networks. However, we also theorize that beyond a threshold, the coordination costs of brokerage may surpass its potential benefits. In addition to that, we study the influence of two individual-level attributes as potential determinants of the participation in medical innovation activities: cognitive breadth and perceived beneficiary impact. We situate our analysis within the context of the Spanish biomedical research framework, where we analyze a sample of 1,309 biomedical scientists.Peer Reviewe