Are firms interested in collaborating with universities? An open-innovation perspective in countries of the South West European Space

Thi s paper explores the determinants of a firm’s interest in collaborating with universities and whether they differ by the technological level of the company’s industry. Based on the conceptual framework of open innovation (OI) model, it is included some aspects related to the transaction costs and roles of innovation diffusion that justifies the study of firm´s interest as previous step of an OI relation among firms and partners. The evidence is based on data collected through semi-structured interviews between January 2009 and October 2009, on a sample of 375 firms from three countries: Spain, Portugal, and France. The results indicate that more innovative firms tend to be more interested in collaborating with universities. The paper provides evidence that country factors also affect a firm’s intention of collaborating with universities. Finally, the results show that the determinants of a high-tech firm’s attitudes to cooperation differ from those found in a non-high-tech firm. In the future, the study of the determinants of those firms’ formal decision to cooperate may let us to understand whether the driving forces of both interest in and decision to cooperate differ.