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Not searching, but finding: how innovation shapes perceptions about universities and public research organisations

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Abstract

Previous research about firms’ perceptions on the usefulness of public research has not distinguished between technological innovators and non-innovators. With the exception of openness of search, we find that factors shaping such perceptions differ in both types of firms. Non-innovators need market power and the presence of an R&D department to profit from public knowledge. Innovators need less sheltered environments and lesser R&D effort, though the availability of resources and absorptive capacity is necessary. Using a sample of 1,031 Spanish manufacturing firms, we conclude that practical experience in technological innovation enhances firms’ perceptions on the usefulness of public research, not directly but by enabling certain internal changes, i.e. it produces encounters between corporate choices and public research.

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Notes

  1. The label ‘searching’ would thus apply to information search both specifically referred to U-PROs and to other sources of information, namely those that reflect the openness of the firm.

  2. Unlikely other studies (Amara and Landry 2005; Mention 2010; Varis and Littunen 2010) we do not use these company responses to approximate the objective influence of different sources of information. Less ambitious, although arguably more realistic, our approach assumes that firms’ responses indicate the perceived usefulness of information for the innovative activities of the company.

  3. As in some previous studies, our data also include non-university public research organisations. These institutions accounted for 18% of total expenditure on R&D in 2008 while universities provided 27 %.

  4. For the sake of robustness, we checked the results with ordered probit models and they were identical.

  5. The number of observations drops compared to Table 2 because of the missing values.

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Acknowledgments

The authors acknowledge the financial support provided by Fundación BBVA (Banco Bilbao Vizcaya Argentaria) and CSIC (Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas) project 201010I004. We are also grateful to Jaider Vega-Jurado for his valuable comments to an earlier version, and to two anonymous referees.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Instituto de Economía, Geografía y Demografía, Centro de Ciencias Humanas y Sociales-Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Cientificas (CCHS-CSIC) (Spanish National Research Council), C/Albasanz, 26-28, 28037, Madrid, Spain

    Ruth Rama

  2. INGENIO (CSIC-UPV), Universitat Poliècnica de València, Camino de Vera s/n, 46022, Valencia, Spain

    Joaquín M. Azagra-Caro

  3. Fundación BBVA, Paseo de Recoletos, 10, 28001, Madrid, Spain

    Rafael Pardo

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  1. Joaquín M. Azagra-Caro
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  2. Rafael Pardo
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  3. Ruth Rama
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Correspondence to Ruth Rama.

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Azagra-Caro, J.M., Pardo, R. & Rama, R. Not searching, but finding: how innovation shapes perceptions about universities and public research organisations. J Technol Transf 39, 454–471 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10961-012-9297-0

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