عوامل موثر بر پروژه های "تحقیق و توسعه" دانشگاه و صنعت: اهمیت جستجو، غربالگری و سیگنالینگ

This paper presents an empirical analysis of the determinants of research cooperation between firms and Public research organisations (PROs) for a sample of innovating small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). The econometric analysis is based on the results of the KNOW survey carried out in seven EU countries during 2000. In contrast to earlier works that provide information about the importance of PROs’ research, we know the number of firm/PRO collaborative research and development (R&D) projects. This allows us to study the determinants of firm collaboration with PROs in terms of both the propensity of a firm to undertake R&D projects with a university (do they cooperate or not) and the extent of this collaboration (number of R&D projects). Two questions are addressed. Which firms cooperated with PROs? And what are the firm characteristics that might explain the number of R&D projects with PROs? The results of our analysis point to two major phenomena. First, the propensity to forge an agreement with an academic partner depends on the ‘absolute size’ of the industrial partner. Second the openness of firms to the external environment, as measured by their willingness to search, screen and signal, significantly affects the development of R&D projects with PROs. Our findings suggest that acquiring knowledge through the screening of publications and involvement in public policies positively affects the probability of signing an agreement with a PRO, but not the number of R&D projects developed. In fact, firms that outsource research and development, and patent to protect innovation and to signal competencies show higher levels of collaboration.

Since the 1980s, many countries have implemented policies to promote and sustain university–industry partnerships. In the light of this phenomenon, an increasing number of academic contributions have attempted to understand, explain, and justify these interactions in economic terms. In Europe, university–industry relationships have been analysed mainly from a qualitative point of view or by relying on case studies of single universities.1 Very few contributions have been supported by systematic data analysis. Some country-specific data have been gathered and analysed: Meyer-Krahmer and Schmoch (1998) and Beise and Stahl (1999) provide interesting evidence of the contribution of public research to industrial innovation in Germany. At the European level, apart from the PACE (Policies, Appropriability and Competitiveness for European Enterprises)2 questionnaire and the three Community Innovation Surveys (CIS),3 there are few databases that facilitate analysis of the links between universities and firms taking into account firm, sector and country effects.

The KNOW questionnaire provides a unique data set for the researcher to analyse the innovation processes of SMEs with less than 999 employees. This paper looked at the characteristics of the firms that developed R&D projects with PROs taking into account sector and country fixed effects. One of the main contributions of this analysis is to characterise firms through the activities used to manage internal and external knowledge. Firms that actively screen their environment and voluntarily disclose internal competencies have a higher propensity to collaborate with academic partners and cooperate in a more extensive way. About half of the firms surveyed had developed R&D projects with PROs. The econometric models developed estimate the impact of firm-specific factors, controlling for sector and country fixed effects, upon both the probability of developing a collaboration and the number of collaborations with a PRO entered into by the firm in the 3 years previous to the KNOW survey. The results of this analysis point to two main findings. The first focuses on the role of the size and the R&D activity on the collaborative behaviour (propensity and intensity) of the firms. The findings mainly confirm the empirical findings for large firms (over 1000 employees). The propensity to conclude an R&D project with an academic partner depends on the ‘absolute size’ of the industrial partner (Arundel et al., 2000, Cohen et al., 2002a, Mohnen and Hoareau, 2003 and Laursen and Salter, 2004). Larger firms are much more likely to collaborate. We also found that the chances of firms with intense R&D activities to cooperate are much higher, as is the likelihood of concluding agreements with PROs: firms with small absorptive capacities had lower probabilities on both counts (Arundel and Geuna, 2004).