Complementarities Between Universities and Technology Institutes: New Empirical Lessons and Perspectives

Abstract

This paper investigates the different roles played by universities and technology institutes (TIs) as innovation partners of firms. Comparing the characteristics of Spanish firms collaborating with these agents allows us to better define complementarities among the target groups of these organizations. Our findings show that those firms collaborating with universities are bigger, have higher internal capabilities and are less dependent on their external relationships while firms collaborating with TIs are smaller, have weaker internal capabilities but are more open to their environment and thus more reliant on external sources. We point to the implications of these findings for regional development. Universities have a role as partners of more technologically advanced firms. TIs, on the other hand, partner those firms, which though also quite advanced, require more external help in their innovation processes. These results should help policy-makers in the definition of more complex regional strategies and the provision of tools aimed at different goals. Managers of universities, TIs and client firms should find these results of help in developing more positive collaborations with one another.

Notes

Collaboration is defined as “active participation of the firm with universities and/or TIs in innovation activities. This does not include pure outsourcing (i.e. with no firm participation)”. Note, however, that the collaborative relationship could include the provision of services if there is active participation by the firm. This distinction in innovation-related activities is quite fuzzy, because these types of activities usually demand the active participation of the client, so that difference between provision of services and innovation collaboration is usually a matter of degree rather than nature (Ham & Mowery, 1998). It is also important to note that collaboration may imply bi-directional and reciprocal flows of knowledge.

There are other types of organizations in other countries, that are on the whole much bigger and more research-oriented, that originated in the public sector including the Fraunhofer Institutes, the Dutch TNO and Finland's VTT. The Spanish TIs are fairly heterogeneous and a few include some of the features (although on a smaller scale) of these larger organizations.

More information on the database can be found at http://sise.fecyt.es/Estudios/PITEC.asp (in English).

About 41.2% of firms cooperating only with TIs in 2004 were also cooperating only with TIs in 2003; 55% of firms cooperating only with universities in 2004 were also cooperating only with universities in 2003. This shows that for several firms cooperation is not a continuous strategy.

Belonging to a group does not imply being part of a multi-locational organization as the whole group might be located in the same place.

Low-tech industries include textiles, food products, tobacco, wood, paper products, among others. Low–medium-tech industries include rubber and plastic products, coke, refined petroleum products, other non-metallic mineral products, basic metals, among others. Medium–high-tech industries include electrical machinery, motor vehicles, chemicals excluding pharmaceuticals, railroad and transport equipment, machinery and equipment, among others. High-tech industries includes aircraft and spacecraft, pharmaceuticals, office machinery, radio, TV and computing machinery, medical, precision and optical instrument.

Innovation expenses include expenditure on both intramural and external R&D and expenditure on other innovation-related activities such as acquisition of machinery, equipment and software (for the purposes of innovation), acquisition of other external knowledge (patents, licences, know-how and so on), training (specifically for the development of innovations), design and market introduction of innovations (OECD, 2005).

Acquisition of machinery, equipment and software, training, design, external knowledge (all aimed at innovation) and marketing of new products.

Innovations in management involve the implementation of new methods for organizing routines and procedures for the conduct of work. These include, for example, the implementation of new practices to improve learning and knowledge sharing within the firm. Innovations in strategy involve the implementation of a new or significantly changed corporate strategy. Mergers with, or the acquisition of, other firms are not included, even if a firm merges with or acquires another firm(s) for the first time.

We also performed a random effects probit model to analyse the characteristics of firms cooperating with both TIs and universities, which is available from the authors on request. These firms are the larger ones in the sample; those with higher internal capabilities and those more frequently belonging to the high-tech sector.

We do not use any variable for firms' innovation results to avoid endogeneity problems in the regression. The same reasoning applies to the importance of the various sources of knowledge which is that innovation results in the period analysed could be affected by the collaboration with a TI or a university. Similarly, the importance given by the firm to each of these as a source of information would probably be affected by the characteristics of the links developed with them. Also, variables such as size could be argued to depend to some extent on collaboration with a TI or university. However, as previously mentioned, this link is more indirect and long term (Ham & Mowery, 1998) so that it would be unusual for these effects to emerge within the period of initial collaboration.

Note that we have six different sectors; five are included in the regression and the sixth (medium–low tech) is used as the control group.

We should point out that although firms collaborating with TIs show lower levels of internal capacity based on the variables described above, they have more internal capabilities than the majority of Spanish firms. The data available do not provide enough information about less technology advanced firms; thus, we can only suggest that TIs are much more focused than universities on those advanced firms with the fewer internal technological capabilities.

The same applies to managers of universities or TIs.