دانلود رایگان مقاله ارتباط علم و فناوری از طریق همکاری آکادمیک-صنعت

abstract

Partnerships that foster the translation of scientific advances emerging from academic research organizations into commercialized products at private firms are a policy tool that has attracted increased interest. This paper examines empirical data from the Danish National Advanced Technology Foundation, an agency that funds partnerships between universities and private companies. We assess the effect on participating firms’ innovative performance, comparing patent count, publication count and proportion of cross-institutional publications between funded and unfunded firms. Specifically, we measure the impact on each of these variables based on three dimensions – small and medium-sized enterprises (SME), younger firms, and size of the collaboration firms participated in – to establish boundary conditions. Our results suggest that receiving funding affects firms’ innovative behavior differently depending on the type of firm, where (1) peer-reviewed publications increased significantly more for SMEs and larger projects, (2) granted patents increased significantly up to 4 years after funding for young firms and those in larger projects, and (3) proportion of cross-institutional publications increased significantly more 3 years after funding for all three sample specifications.

5. Discussion and conclusion

5.1. Empirical contributions to literature This work provides empirical evidence on the effect of a funding programtargeting academic–industrypartnerships onfirminnovative performance. To our surprise, we found no significant positive effect of funding on the full sample of qualitatively similar firms, especially for patents, as Kaiser and Kuhn (2012) documented an increase in filed patents in a similar program. We posit that the discrepancy in findings may be due to differences in how patents are measured as well as the counterfactual sample of comparison. In our design, we used patents filed up to 5 years after funding grants, whereas Kaiser and Kuhn use applications of patents that may or may not have been issued. Unless all filed patents are granted (which is relatively uncommon), firm’s filed patents will be greater than granted patents. Moreover, we used in our counterfactual sample firms that were denied funding but still submitted a comprehensive proposal, whereas Kaiser and Kuhn employed a matched nearest neighbor sample of firms similar to funded ones based on observables. Our points of comparison are different, since we compare our funded firms to firms that already had the intention of pursuing the proposed project, while Kaiser and Kuhn compare their funded firms that may or may not have had the intention to pursue an R&D project.