The role of universities in the location of innovative start-ups

Abstract

Start-ups increasingly find the prospect of university-industry collaborations to\ud be a powerful driver of innovation and entrepreneurship activity. Moreover, at\ud the geographical level, they are attracted by teaching and research institutions,\ud either public or private. This paper focuses on the role played by universities.\ud Our hypothesis is that geographical proximity favors the transfer of knowledge and\ud technology from universities to industries and, consequently, represents a positive\ud factor for regional economic development.\ud Results show that university spillovers are positively correlated with the creation\ud of innovative start-ups. Furthermore, the presence of human capital (graduates)\ud exerts a significant influence on the location decisions of start-ups, being a source\ud for competitiveness for firms close to universities. Research quality, especially in\ud the social sciences area, attracts innovative start-ups, while third-mission activities\ud have a weak impact on locational choice

Selection Between One-Time Transfer and University-Industry Cooperation in Technology Transfer: A Matching Model

“…Here two possible rules are proposed to solve the conflict. 2 The utility function of entrepreneurs is selected as 0 , = , T , , > 0.…”

“…In recent decades, the role of universities and other institutions is increasingly expanding beyond their traditional tasks of teaching and researching to promote innovation performance and economic growth in neighboring regions mainly through knowledge spillovers, which are usually in the form of technology transfer (TT) [1,2]. Literature studying on this kind of topics can generally be divided into two aspects.…”

“…On one hand, based on the endogenous growth theory, knowledge spillover theory of entrepreneurship (KSTE) tries to expand the microeconomic foundation by identifying and adding some factors of knowledge spillover into the original model to describe their behaviors and performances on affecting economic growth of a region or a country [3][4][5][6]. On the other hand, some other studies focus on the relationships between universities and firms in the process of technology transfer, e.g., how to improve the "Industry-Science Links" and remove the obstacles among them [7][8][9], and how to select appropriate modes of cooperation for different kinds of scientists under different kinds of situations [2,10]. While there are large sums of studies on the former kinds of topics, the latter ones have not been fully investigated yet, and to the best of our own knowledges, lack an integrated model to describe the different characters and jointly behaviors of the agents in different forms of TT.…”

“…Calcagnini etc. [2] find that human capitals such as graduates can significantly influence the location decisions of start-ups, i.e., firms are usually set closed to universities. Weng and Chang [14] view organizational heterogeneity as a key factor that influences the effects of U-I cooperation policy in higher education institutions.…”

A matching model of university–industry collaborations

“…Indeed, the intensity with which academic institutions collaborate with industry varies enormously among sectors and products (Muscio et al 2014). Further, institutional differences among universities are a crucial aspect of both spillover processes (Calcagnini et al 2015) and the commercialization of knowledge, as well as basic research . Perkmann et al (2013) classify knowledge transfer channels as commercialization or academic engagement.…”