Sandbox+3

= University-industry interface: Introduction = Purpose of the Introduction


 * 1) ==1. What is university-industry interface? ==

This theme deals with the co-operation and the knowledge flows between universities and public research institutes (PRIs) and the private sector that may affect innovative entrepreneurship. Interactions between universities and industry in addition to the important role in supplying skills can take place through a variety of channels, such as: - joint research projects - university consulting arrangements provided for industry - people-based interactions between creators and users of new knowledge - knowledge creation for industry including via the publications of research results and possibly also obtaining intellectual property rights activities (e.g. patenting) - entrepreneurial activities of faculty and students (including e.g. spin-offs) - mobility of highly skilled students and faculty staff from universities to industry and vice versa.

References: - OECD (2012), Report on financing, transferring, and commercializing knowledge, 13-14 December 2012


 * 1) ==2. How does university-industry interface affect innovative entrepreneurship? ==

University-industry interface can contribute to the development and the commercialization of innovations in the following ways: - Co-creation of knowledge involving universities and new ventures. The benefits of joint research projects may include access to highly skilled human resources, complementary R&D capabilities, and different approaches for problem solving.  - Access to university research and discoveries and the exploitation of their commercial potential by entrepreneurs (e.g. through licensing) <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"> - Creation of research spin-offs by faculty members. Research-based spin-offs are generally understood to be small, new technology-based firms whose intellectual capital originated in universities or other public research institutes. The dimensions that differentiate spin-off firms from others are the type of resources they draw upon, their prevailing business model and their links to research organisations. Such spin-offs are created in order to commercially deploy new knowledge generated by public research organisations.) <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"> - Knowledge diffusion (e.g. due to networking between faculty members and entrepreneurs), which may increase firms’ ability to find and absorb technological information, and provide them with information about trends in R&D. <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"> Exploiting university- industry linkages well can be important for innovative entrepreneurs since this can help them to compensate possibly limited internal resources and infrastructure for conducting R&D and other costly innovation activities. Lacking the assets and resources to invest in formal R&D, SMEs may particularly benefit from knowledge spillovers arising from public research organizations (Acs, Audretsch and Feldman, 1994).

<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"> References: <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"> - Bishop, K., D’Este, P., Neely, A., 2011. Gaining from interactions with universities: multiple methods for nurturing absorptive capacity. Research Policy 40 (1), 30–40.

<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"> - De Fuentes C., Dutrénit G. (2012) Best channels of academia–industry interaction for long-term benefit Research Policy, Volume 41, Issue 9, November 2012, Pages 1666–1682 [] <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"> - Lee, Y., 2000. The sustainability of university–industry research collaboration: an empirical assessment. Journal of Technology Transfer 25, 111–133. <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"> - OECD (2010), SMEs, Entrepreneurship and Innovation, OECD Studies on SMEs and Entrepreneurship, OECD Publishing. doi: [|10.1787/9789264080355-en] <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"> - OECD (2012), Report on financing, transferring, and commercializing knowledge, 13-14 December 2012 <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"> - Zucker, L.G., Darby, M.R., Armstrong, J.S., 2002. Commercializing knowledge. University science, knowledge capture, and firm performance in biotechnology. Management Science 48, 138–153. <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"> 3.a - The importance of university-industry interface for their success
 * 1) ==<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">3.How important is university-industry interface? ==

<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"> - Evidence shows that that interactions with universities and PRIs can bring a wide range of benefits to firms, such as increases in product development, innovation, and productivity (Lee, 2000; Cohen et al. 2002, Adams et al., 2003; Hanel and St-Pierre, 2006; Arvanitis et al., 2008, Dutrénit et al., 2010a, De Fuentes and Dutrénit, 2012).

<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"> - These benefits arose from joint and contract research, use of consultancy services among other types of interactions (Arza and Vazquez, 2010; Dutrénit et al.,2010, De Fuentes and Dutrénit, 2012).

<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"> - There is also evidence to suggest that SMEs with external innovation linkages tend to perform better in terms of innovation and growth compared to those without these linkages (Powell and Grodal, 2005; Stuart, 2000; Baum, Calabrese and Silverman, 2000; Davenport, 2005). This might, however, also be partly related to the fact that better-performing SMEs will select into such types of cooperation. Interactions between universities and businesses depends on multiple firm characteristics, such as the firm’s age (Eom and Lee, 2009; Giuliani and Arza, 2009), the firm’s size (Cohen et al., 2002; Hanel and St-Pierre, 2006), the sector, the type of R&D activities performed by the firms, and the geographical proximity of firms to high-quality public research organizations. For instance, in most countries large firms are usually twice to three times more likely than small and medium-sized enterprises to engage in industry-science relationships, as shown in (OECD, 2012).