An empirical study of university–industry R&D collaboration in China: Implications for technology in society

This research investigates the growing phenomenon of university–industry (U–I) collaboration in high-tech strategic projects in China. After significant changes in the trading policies of 1978, China has gained heightened attention in technology and innovation. To achieve the stated strategic national goals, Research and Development (R&D) collaboration is essential. Organizations preferred to collaborate in order to share the burden of R&D costs and efforts. The academic outputs (research publications) of Chinese academic institutions and technology patenting ratio are increasing daily in China. These increasing numbers signal the importance of R&D. High-tech industries are inclined to share projects with universities. Foreign enterprises, state supported enterprises and local industry have played key roles to strengthening university–industry relationships.     

Firm growth and R&D investment: SVAR evidence from the world’s top R&D investors

Understanding causal relationships among key economic variables is crucial for policy makers, who wish to e.g. stimulate private R&D growth. To this end, we applied a technique recently imported from the Machine Learning community (Structural Vector Autoregressions (SVARs) identified using Independent Components Analysis (ICA)) to a data-set of the world’s largest R&D investors. Our analysis highlights the key role of firm growth in the areas of employment and sales, rather than growth of profits or market capitalization, in stimulating R&D growth. R&D growth appears toward the end of the causal ordering of the growth process. Our results suggest that policies to increase private R&D would do better to target growth of sales and employment rather than market capitalization or profits.     

Heterogeneity in industry–university R&D collaboration and firm innovative performance

Scientometrics - University–industry R&;amp;D collaboration is a key driver of participating firms’ technological capability. However, there is still debate on the determinants of a...     

Measuring university–industry collaboration in a regional innovation system

Studies of university–industry collaboration remain subject to important limitations due to the shortage of empirical data and a lack of consistency in that obtained to date. This article puts into practice a set of universities Third Mission indicators in a regional innovation system. Selected indicators previously compiled from literature were reorganized and pre-tested. We have undertaken two face-to-face surveys of 737 firms and 765 heads of research teams, respectively. The results test the validation of indicators and provide a complex map of university–industry linkages as well as some observations on the flexibility needed to address this issue.     

Technology–industry networks in technology commercialization: evidence from Korean university patents

Although there is increasing interest in policy issues on university patents, studies hitherto have focused on certain limited factors or case studies. By using a two-mode network analysis, this study identifies idiosyncratic patterns and differences in technology–industry networks between the two groups of Korean university patents—commercialized and non-commercialized. We collected patent data including bibliographic information from Korean universities that have run a patent management advisor dispatch program since 2005. Then, network analysis and analysis of variance for the two groups were conducted to investigate the group differences. We found that the structure of the technology–industry network was significantly more direct and simpler for commercialized than for non-commercialized patents. Specifically, we found that both direct and indirect linkages between technology and related industry were more complex for the non-commercialized group than for the commercialized one: the direct linkage was stronger for the commercialized than for the non-commercialized group. Our study suggests an important aspect of technology commercialization from the perspective of the inherent characteristics of patents, which is at variance with the evolutionary approaches of previous studies.     

Community-level characteristics and member firms’ invention: evidence from university–industry innovation community in China

Increased attention has been drawn to the phenomenon of community-based innovation; however, researchers have mainly emphasized firm-centric communities, paying little attention to non-firm members. This study focuses on university–industry (U–I) innovation communities to address this gap. Using China’s joint patent application data from 2000 to 2017, we construct a U–I collaboration network, identified existing U–I innovation communities, and reveal community-level characteristics of birth, expansion, maturity, and self-renewal in a lifecycle framework. The results suggest that average geographical distance negatively affects firm invention production and within-community knowledge diversity positively affects firm innovation. The effects of dynamic attributes indicate that U–I community membership turnover affects member firm’s patent production in an inverse U-shaped manner. In addition, a firm’s within-community network position exerts a moderating effect on the relation between community membership dynamics and firm innovation. In theoretical terms, this study combines innovation community and social network theories, using a lifecycle framework to examine the influence of the specified characteristics in facilitating member firms’ invention productivity. Finally, this study discusses the practical implications for U–I community stakeholders and policymakers.

     

Innovation and Firm Growth: Is R&D Worth It?

The paper contributes to an emerging literature that critically questions the degree to which R&D, at the centre of national and transnational innovation policies, results in firm growth. The differences in how innovation affects firm growth is explored for small and large publicly quoted US pharmaceutical firms between 1950 and 2008. We observe that the positive impact of R&D on firm growth is highly conditional upon a combination of firm-specific characteristics such as firm size, patenting and persistence in patenting. For small firms, R&D boosts growth for only a subset of firms: namely, those that patent persistently for a minimum of five years. For large pharmaceutical firms, on the other hand, R&D may have a negative impact on growth; potentially resulting from the low R&D productivity these firms have suffered from since the mid-1990s. These results raise important issues around the R&D and firm growth relationship for small and large firms as well the role of persistence in innovation for boosting firm performance.     

A routine for measuring synergy in university–industry–government relations: mutual information as a Triple-Helix and Quadruple-Helix indicator

Mutual information in three (or more) dimensions can be considered as a Triple-Helix indicator of possible synergy in university–industry–government relations. An open-source routine th4.exe makes the computation of this indicator interactively available at the internet, and thus applicable to large sets of data. Th4.exe computes all probabilistic entropies and mutual information in two, three, and, if available in the data, four dimensions among, for example, classes such as geographical addresses (cities, regions), technological codes (e.g. OECD’s NACE codes), and size categories; or, alternatively, among institutional addresses (academic, industrial, public sector) in document sets. The relations between the Triple-Helix indicator—as an indicator of synergy—and the Triple-Helix model that specifies the possibility of feedback by an overlay of communications, are also discussed.     

An analysis of the status of the Triple Helix and university–industry–government relationships in Asia

The literature on the characteristics of the Triple Helix (TH) and university–industry–government relationships has not sufficiently shared research on this topic in Asia. Based on the assumption that the literature does not provide a sufficient overview of the sparse and complex yet diverse process of TH research in Asia, this study examines the characteristics of TH scholars such as their affiliations, preferred journals, international linkage patterns, and semantic discourse networks by analyzing their research articles. The results identify the most prominent TH scholars, journals, issues, and research trends in Asia and suggest a need for deeper and more creative analyses of the TH model in the region and for longer time periods for longitudinal analyses.     

The inventive activities and collaboration pattern of university–industry–government in China based on patent analysis

China’s economy and technology have experienced spectacular growth since the Opening-up Policy adopted in 1978. In order to explore the innovation process and development of China, this study examines the inventive activities and the collaboration pattern of university, industry and government (UIG) in China. This study analyzes the Chinese patent data retrieved from the United States Patent and Trademark Office. Three models of UIG relations which represent different triple helix configurations are introduced. According to the property of patent assignee, patent ownership can be divided into three types: individuals, enterprises, and universities and research institutes. Furthermore, enterprises can be classified into state-owned enterprise (SOE), private-owned enterprise (POE) and foreign enterprise (FE). The corresponding relationship of patent ownership with UIG is set up. Through analyzing the issued year, it is found that the inventive activities of China have experienced three developmental phases and have been promoted quickly in recent years. The achievement of innovation activities in China primarily falls on the enterprise, especially FEs and POEs. The innovation strengths of the three development phases have shifted from government to university and research institute and then industry. According to co-patent analysis, it is found that the collaboration between university and industry is the strongest and has been intensified in recent years, but other forms of collaboration among UIG have been weak. In addition, an innovation relation model of China was set up. The evolution process of innovation systems was explored, from etatistic model, followed by improved “laissez-faire” model, and then shifting toward triple helix model.     

Driving factors of external funding and funding effects on academic innovation performance in university–industry–government linkages

This study focuses on analyzing the driving factors of government and industry funding and the effects of such funding on academic innovation performance in the Taiwan’s university–industry–government (UIG) collaboration system. This research defines the relationships of the triple helix in the UIG collaboration system as a complex intertwined combination that covers demography, financial support, and innovation performance. These relationships are simultaneously modeled by a multivariate technique, structural equation modeling, to investigate the causal-effect relationship among the antecedent factors on the subsequent ones. This model will enable us to investigate three questions: (1) Is government funding or industry funding tied to university demography, to university innovation performance, or to both? (2) Does government funding lead industry funding? (3) Is government funding or industry funding conducive to more university innovation performance? In addition to verifying the model against all participating universities in the UIG collaboration, we also categorize them into two tiers in terms of whether or not universities have been selected for the incentive programs of UIG collaboration so as to explore groups’ differences.     

The interaction mode and geographic scope of firms’ technology alliances: implications of balancing exploration and exploitation in R&D

This paper proposes that the interaction mode, i.e. interactive and iterative, and geographic scope, i.e. domestic and international, of technology alliances generate sources of exploration and exploitation for firms. An implication of this idea is that firms can use these sources for balancing its internal focus on exploratory and exploitative research and development activities (R&D). Then, the paper suggests that the use of this balancing strategy has positive effects on a firm’s innovative performance. Using panel data based on Spanish manufacturing companies for the period 2004–2012, the empirical results confirm that firms balancing their internal exploration or exploitation in R&D with sources of external exploitation or exploration in their technology alliances are the firms with better prospects to produce innovation streams. Implications for the literature on complementarities in innovation, ambidexterity and R&D alliance formation are derived from the analysis.     

A simulation model of the Triple Helix of university–industry–government relations and the decomposition of the redundancy

A Triple Helix (TH) network of bi- and trilateral relations among universities, industries, and governments can be considered as an ecosystem in which uncertainty can be reduced when functions become synergetic. The functions are based on correlations among distributions of relations, and therefore latent. The correlations span a vector space in which two vectors (P and Q) can be used to represent forward “sending” and reflexive “receiving,” respectively. These two vectors can also be understood in terms of the generation versus reduction of uncertainty in the communication field that results from interactions among the three bi-lateral channels of communication. We specify a system of Lotka–Volterra equations between the vectors that can be solved. Redundancy generation can then be simulated and the results can be decomposed in terms of the TH components. Furthermore, we show that the strength and frequency of the relations are independent parameters in the model. Redundancy generation in TH arrangements can be decomposed using Fourier analysis of the time-series of empirical studies. As an example, the case of co-authorship relations in Japan is re-analyzed. The model allows us to interpret the sinusoidal functions of the Fourier analysis as representing redundancies.     

U.S. News & World Report Best Colleges rankings: Which institutional metrics contribute to sustained stratification?

Scientometrics - Universities compete to improve their ranking in the different ranking systems and expend resources toward this goal. Higher rankings attract elite students, research funds,...     

Offshore versus domestic: Can EM MNCs reach higher R&D quality abroad?

In the current discourse about the technological development of emerging market multinational companies (EM MNCs), the internationalization of research and development (R&D) activities is increasingly discussed as a strategy for catching-up to established MNCs. EM MNCs attempt to use international R&D to tap into technologically superior resources abroad which are not available to them in their home market. This study compares the performance of domestic and offshore R&D activities to look into EM MNCs’ ability to conduct high-quality R&D abroad. We use the Chinese telecommunication equipment manufacturer Huawei as a best practice case study. To map their worldwide patent quality pattern, we propose a multiple-patent-office-approach to ensure a balanced view on their activities with data from SIPO, USPTO and EPO. We also employ three different measures to capture different dimensions of patent quality. The results of the empirical model support the assumption of higher quality for patents with knowledge from advanced offshore locations.     

Environmental,health and safety aspects of nanotechnology—implications for the R&D in (small) companies

The growth of nanotechnology has led to an unprecedented research and development effort in both the public and the private sectors; world wide, an increasing number of laboratories, fabrication and manufacturing plants develop or apply novel nanometre-sized materials for applications ranging from large-scale industrial materials, to electronic components and healthcare and medical products; an increasing number of start-ups have been launched to establish their nanotechnology-based products in a trillion-dollar market.

Very little, however, is known about the interaction of man-made nanostructured materials and living organisms, as studies of nanotoxicology are gaining increasing interest, but are still in their infancy. Despite the formation of many focus and lobbying groups, proper legislation of the environmental, health and safety aspects of nanotechnology will take years to be implemented. In the mean time, it is of utmost importance that companies working with nanometre-sized matter take appropriate precautions to protect their staff, the environment and the customer. Toxicology tests and agency approval of new nanometre-sized materials are prohibitively expensive, but, even if working on a tight budget, nanotechnology companies can achieve an ethical and safe business conduct via a number of possible routes.     

A bibliometric portrait of the evolution, scientific roots and influence of the literature on university–industry links

The study of university?Cindustry (U?CI) relations has been the focus of growing interest in the literature. However, to date, a quantitative overview of the existing literature in this field has yet to be accomplished. This study intends to fill this gap through the use of bibliometric techniques. By using three different yet interrelated databases??a database containing the articles published on U?CI links, which encompass 534 articles published between 1986 and 2011; a ??roots?? database, which encompasses over 20,000 references to the articles published on U?CI relations; and a ??influences?? database which includes more than 15,000 studies that cited the articles published on U?CI relations??we obtained the following results: (1) ??Academic spin offs??, ??Scientific and technological policies?? and (to a greater extent) ??Knowledge Transfer Channels?? are topics in decline; (2) ??Characteristics of universities, firms and scientists??, along with ??Regional spillovers??, show remarkable growth, and ??Measures and indicators?? can be considered an emergent topic; (3) clear tendency towards ??empirical?? works, although ??appreciative and empirical?? papers constitute the bulk of this literature; (4) the multidisciplinary nature of the intellectual roots of the U?CI literature??an interesting blending of neoclassical economics (focused on licensing, knowledge transfer and high-tech entrepreneurship) and heterodox approaches (mainly related to systems of innovation) is observed in terms of intellectual roots; (5) the influence of the U?CI literature is largely concentrated on the industrialized world and on the research area of innovation and technology (i.e., some ??scientific endogamy?? is observed).     

Sol–gel synthesis of 2D and 3D nanostructured YSZ:Yb<Superscript>3+</Superscript> ceramics

This paper presents results of a detailed study of fundamental aspects of the formation of 2D and 3D nanostructured YSZ:Yb³⁺ ceramics with a cubic structure through a key synthesis step in aqueous solutions of zirconium-containing hydroxy nanoparticles (1–2 nm) modified by Y³⁺ and Yb³⁺ ions, with the use of a sol–gel method and subsequent calcination of the resultant xerogels at temperatures above 350°C. As starting chemicals for the synthesis of ceramic powders, we used zirconyl, yttrium, and ytterbium nitrates and chlorides and aqueous ammonia. Using mixed solutions of these salts and a procedure developed by us, we synthesized sols, gels, and xerogels. To examine the effect of temperature on solid-state transformations, the xerogels were calcined according to a predetermined program in a muffle furnace at temperatures in the range from 350 to 1350°C (rarely, up to 1650°C). We focused primarily on ceramic powders close in composition to 0.86ZrO₂ · 0.10Y₂O₃ · 0.04Yb₂O₃. The ceramics were characterized by high-resolution transmission electron microscopy, electron microdiffraction, electronic diffuse reflectance spectroscopy, energy dispersive X-ray microanalysis, and X-ray fluorescence analysis.