Academic inventors: collaboration and proximity with industry

Abstract

This paper addresses a number of fundamental research questions on universityindustry (U-I) collaborations. Are U-I collaborations intrinsically different from other forms of collaboration, such as inter-firm or inter-university collaborations? Are they more difficult to form? Is their output qualitatively different? What factors facilitate their development? By looking at the collaborative behavior of all Italian inventors over the period, the empirical analysis shows that U-I collaborations are less likely to happen when compared to collaborations involving exclusively university partners of business partners, and suggests that they tend to generate patents of more general applicability in subsequent inventions-measured by forward-citations. As emphasized by the literature, geographical proximity plays an important role in facilitating all forms of collaboration. At the same time, it works as a possible substitute for institutional proximity, facilitating U-I collaborations. However, the involvement of 'star inventors' on both sides of the collaboration can play an equally important role in 'bridging' universities and industry.

Universities and open innovation: the determinants of network centrality

“…Extant research on university-industry ties has produced some evidence suggesting that the co-location of research intensive firms and universities in the same region facilitates interactions that lead to innovative collaboration (Laursen et al 2011;D'Este et al 2013;Crescenzi et al 2017;Davids and Frenken 2018). Given the current evidence base, it can be suggested that universities located in core regions with greater pools of large R&D-intensive firms may have better opportunities to forge links with large R&D players than their counterparts in more peripheral regions (Crescenzi et al 2013;Vallance et al 2018).…”

Microgeography and the Direction of Inventive Activity

“…In part, this is due to the difficulty of finding plausibly exogenous variation in location choice. Most of the existing literature relies on observational data (Olson and Olson 2000, Van den Bulte and Moenaert 1998, Kabo et al 2014, Fayard and Weeks 2007, Kabo et al 2015, Crescenzi et al 2017, which is subject to selection bias from individuals, teams, and organizations choosing where to locate. This makes it challenging to isolate the effect of colocation from confounders and other forms of proximity, such as proximity in social space and in knowledge space.…”

Mapping the field: a bibliometric analysis of the literature on university–industry collaborations

“…While the distance perspective offers an increasing understanding of the outcomes of partner spatial, cognitive, organisational, social and institutional proximities, the multidimensionality and broad scope of this perspective suggest further research opportunities (Crescenzi et al 2017;D'Este et al 2013). The academic understanding of U-I partnership's evolvement and outcomes may benefit from exploring the interplay of different types of proximities and associated dynamics (Muscio and Pozzali 2013;Presutti et al 2017).…”

“…The academic understanding of U-I partnership's evolvement and outcomes may benefit from exploring the interplay of different types of proximities and associated dynamics (Muscio and Pozzali 2013;Presutti et al 2017). Here, future studies could further examine whether and how a specific type of proximity can foster the development of other proximity types-for example, spatial proximity may lead to social proximity-as well as whether one type of proximity may replace another depending on the context in which the U-I collaboration is embedded (Crescenzi et al 2017). However, as the capturing of direct and particularly indirect effects of partner proximity remains challenging, researchers are encouraged to develop alternative outcome indicators to reliably estimate the effects of partner proximity in the context of joint R&D activities Fukugawa 2013).…”