Liney Manjarrés-Henríquez

Coexistence of university-industry relations and academic research: Barrier to or incentive for scientific productivity

In this article we analyse whether university-industry relations (UIR) are penalising research activity and inhibiting university researchers’ scientific productivity and, if so, to what extent. The analysis is based on a case study of two Spanish universities. We find that UIR exercise a positive effect on university scientific productivity only when they are based on the development of R&D contracts, and when the funds obtained through these activities do not exceed 15% of the researcher’s total budget. We also find that researchers who combine research and UIR activities obtain higher funding from competitive public sources than that engage only in research. In addition, their average scientific productivity is higher and they achieve higher status within their institutions than those members of faculty who concentrate only on research.

University industry links and product innovation: cooperate or contract?

The role of universities in product innovation has received considerable attention over the past decade. However, little is known about how the type of formal university-firm interaction predicts innovative performance and the degree of novelty of new products. This research differentiates two forms of firm high-relational interaction with universities: R&D contracting and cooperation. We exploit the panel structure of a dataset of 5,858 Spanish manufacturing firms with fixed-effects models. The empirical analysis finds that, although both contracting and cooperation predict product innovative performance, the two activities differ in the degree of novelty of new product outcomes. The implications are that the codified nature and asymmetric scope of R&D contracting is more suitable for exploitative innovation, resulting in product innovation that is incremental in nature. On the other hand, the possibility to exchange and create tacit knowledge and the explorative nature of R&D cooperation provide firms with the opportunity to better access the broad knowledge base of universities, leading to product innovations with a higher degree of novelty

An analysis of the Spanish ceramic tile industry research contracts and patents

ABSTRACT In this work, we apply a systemic approach to the analysis of a particular geographic territory, the industrial district. We are particularly interested in analysing the interaction between the productive-technological environment and the scientific environment by an examination of research contracts and patents. Our analysis shows that R&D activity in the Spanish ceramic tile District Innovation System was mainly conducted by suppliers. Final producers’ innovation efforts were related to non-technological aspects and differentiation.