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.

Fostering university-industry R&D collaborations in European Union countries

“…To catalyse this may require proactive national and European innovation policy direction setting that affects change at the university level as well as further public-sector investments. Such a prioritization benefits business in terms of increasing their R&D activities and expanding their economies of technological scope (Leyden and Link 2013). Universities can also benefit through enhanced economies of technological scope with existing industrial R&D 9 A Tobit specification is appropriate because the variable RDCollab has a Likert scale upper bound of 10.…”

Rowing against the wind: how do times of austerity shape academic entrepreneurship in unfriendly environments?

“…This is, "a context that is rich in knowledge generates entrepreneurial opportunities from those ideas" (Acs et al 2013: 757). On the one hand, contextual knowledge richness (or scarcity) can be closely related to institutional and organizational-level reflexivity, for instance when knowledge incubators promoted by universities develop new ideas and produce R&D results that can have a potential impact on the society as a whole (Acs et al 2013;Fritsch and Aamoucke 2013;Leyden and Link 2013). On the other hand, the availability of astute human capital willing to use "spilled" knowledge for entrepreneurial endeavors can be considered as an important component of individual-level reflexivity.…”

“…As a result, dynamics of mutual reinforcement or both organization and individual-level reflexivity dynamics mightto some extentcounter-balance negative environmental conditions for (academic) entrepreneurship. Interestingly, the potential role of universities in these dynamics has been highlighted form various perspectives, such as (i) universities' catalyzing effect on knowledge spillovers (Leyden and Link 2013;Rodríguez-Gulías et al 2017), (ii) their influence as key actors in regional public research and higher education (Fritsch and Aamoucke 2013), and (iii) universities' specific specializations as a significant determinant of firm creation across industries at a local level (Bonaccorsi et al 2013).…”

Public policy for academic entrepreneurship initiatives: a review and critical discussion

“…Yet, when knowledge is tacit and harder to transfer across long distances, the positive externalities become concentrated to the geographical proximity-a situation known as localized knowledge spillovers (Audretsch and Feldman 1996). A sub-stream of this literature has devoted special attention to spillovers from universities (Audretsch and Lehmann 2005;Jaffe 1989;Leyden and Link 2013;Wennberg et al 2011). This particular characteristic of knowledge as a public good does however imply that markets are likely to undersupply it.…”