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J Technol Transf (2013) 38:93115 DOI 10.1007/s10961-011-9229-4
Nola Hewitt-Dundas
Published online: 24 July 2011 Springer Science+Business Media, LLC 2011
Abstract The potential for universities to contribute positively to business innovation has received much attention in recent years. While the determinants of university-business cooperation have been examined extensively, less attention has been given to the mediating inuence of proximity in this relationship. The analysis in this paper builds on the UK business innovation survey (20022005) by incorporating measures of the university research environment for each of the 16,500 businesses surveyed. These measures allow us to look beyond business-level characteristics as determinants of the geography of university cooperation and account for the character of the local university environment. Measures include the distance from each business to its nearest university, the quality of local university research and the density of the university research environment. The ndings suggest that signicant differences exist between those businesses that cooperate with local universities and those that cooperate with non-local universities. These differences relate to business size, sales prole, location, absorptive capacity and innovation activity. In addition, we also nd that if a business is located close to a research excellent university, cooperation tends to remain local, however, the distance between businesses and the nearest university is not a signicant determinant of university-business cooperation and further, the higher the concentration of universities in the business locale, the more likely businesses are to cooperate with non-local universities.
Keywords University-business Cooperation Innovation Proximity
Knowledge sourcing
JEL Classication O31 O32 O33 O19
1 Introduction
The innovation process is increasingly characterized as multidirectional, iterative and involving multiple actors (Kline and Rosenberg 1986; Malecki 1997; Evangelista 2000;
N. Hewitt-Dundas (&)
Queens University Belfast, 25 University Square, Belfast, UK e-mail: [email protected]
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Tether 2005). As these actors interact, a ow of knowledge is created that drives R&D, innovation, economic growth and competitiveness (Pianta 1995; DTI 2003a, b; HM Treasury 2003). Conscious of this, numerous government initiatives have sought to stimulate greater interaction between businesses and universities. Although, university-business interaction has always occurred to some extent (Godin and Gingras 2000), greater openness in the innovation process has altered the intensity, the nature and ultimately the importance of cooperating...