Title: Which firms use universities as cooperation partners? - A comparative view in Europe

Authors: Kärt Rõigas; Pierre Mohnen; Urmas Varblane

Addresses: School of Economics and Business Administration, University of Tartu, Narva Rd. 4–110, Tartu, 51009, Estonia ' Maastricht University and UNU-MERIT, P.O. Box 616, 6200 MD Maastricht, The Netherlands ' School of Economics and Business Administration, University of Tartu, Narva Rd. 4–110, Tartu, 51009, Estonia

Abstract: Collaboration between firms and universities, two main actors in the national system of innovation, brings the needs of the business world to the attention of the scientific community and allow scientific progress to be diffused more quickly in the real world. The aim of the paper is to compare the determinants of university-industry cooperation across countries and to identify differences between firms that cooperate with domestic and those that cooperate with foreign universities. We use data from 14 European countries taken from the 2008 community innovation survey. The degree of internationalisation is the main determinant of cooperation. Exporting or foreign-owned firms are more likely to cooperate with foreign universities. Differences in cooperation determinants also appear between the four country groupings that we extract by a cluster analysis on variables describing their institutional settings and national innovation systems. Notably different is the group of countries with a weak national innovation system.

Keywords: university-industry cooperation; national system of innovation; open innovation; knowledge-based theory of the firm; competitiveness; technological change; cooperation with foreign universities; external sources of knowledge; triple helix; comparative view; European countries; community innovation survey.

DOI: 10.1504/IJTM.2018.088703

International Journal of Technology Management, 2018 Vol.76 No.1/2, pp.32 - 57

Received: 03 Feb 2015
Accepted: 31 Jan 2016
Published online: 15 Dec 2017 *

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