Knowledge spillovers, collective entrepreneurship, and economic growth: the role of universities

Abstract

To improve our understanding of the role that universities play in facilitating the transmission of knowledge to private-sector business enterprises so as to generate economic growth, this article builds on the Knowledge Spillover Theory of Entrepreneurship to develop a formal model of university-with-business enterprise collaborative research partnerships in which the outcome is both mutually desirable and feasible. This model shows that if a university seeks to act as a complement to private-sector collaborative R&D so that it will be attractive to both incumbent firms and startup entrepreneurs, it needs to structure its program so that business enterprise revenues increase and business enterprise R&D costs rise by a smaller proportion than revenues increase, if they rise at all (and a fall would be better). Such a structure is consistent with both business enterprise and university interests, but is only likely to be feasible if the university is subsidized to cover the cost of such public-private collaborative research partnerships. In the absence of such support, the university will have to cover its costs through a fee charged to participating business enterprises and that will result in the university being seen as a substitute rather than a complement to private-sector collaborative R&D, and thus the university will be seen as an unattractive partner for many business enterprises.

University Contributions to the Circular Economy: Professing the Hidden Curriculum

“…The sample provided examples of where a focus on costs and/or resources has led to solutions that are compatible with a circular economy. The grey water harvesting solutions of the Universities of Ottawa [80] and Nottingham [81] are examples that take the full lifecycle of water into consideration. The re:centre building at the University of Bradford [82] is an exemplary demonstration of where a sustainable lifecycle has been planned at a university.…”

“…In order to achieve this, universities need to embed local development in their strategies and to combine on-campus projects with a robust curriculum and community action. There is also a need to educate managers, staff and students on the different approaches to sustainable development and their outcomes [74,80,83,84].…”

A matching model of university–industry collaborations

“…In this section, we develop a matching model of university-industry collaborations that is closely connected to the Pissarides' (2000) and Leyden and Link's (2013b) models.…”

“…Such complexities deserve an additional effort in terms of theoretical models, which help to explain why different empirical patterns may originate. Our model develops one of the original intuitions by Leyden and Link (2013b) about the mechanisms by which innovative firms search collaborative research partners by means of a matching process.…”

Entrepreneurship in Higher Education: The impact of competition‐based policy programmes exemplified by the German Excellence Initiative

“…Universities are organisations that perform a key role within societies by generating and transmitting knowledge and human capital, providing a community of experimentation, innovation shaping regional wealth and competitiveness (Audretsch, Lehmann, & Warning, ; Breznitz & Feldman, ; Carree, Della Malva, & Santarelli, ; Lehmann, ; Lehmann & Menter, ; Leyden & Link, ; Link & Welsh, ). Since high‐quality scientific research has been identified as a sine qua non in shaping and fostering future‐oriented technologies and industries, rankings of universities have been identified as predictors for future strength and competitiveness (Thomson Reuters, ), lagging behind others in university rankings could result in lagging behind in economic terms in the near future (for a discussion, see Hazelkorn, , , pp.…”