Technology Transfer in a Global Economy

Young innovative companies (YICs) are attracting attention in their role of industry regenerators. However, we have little understanding about their relations with universities as sources of information. This chapter explores university-industry interaction involving YIC in the Valencian Community, using YIC founders’ personal attributes and motivations as explanatory variables. The Valencian Community has a relatively high degree of university-industry interaction but surprisingly little technological innovation.

A survey of YICs in the region shows that, in their case, firm size does not affect the probability of contracting with universities and that R&D intensity is not significant if we consider firm founders’ personal characteristics and motivations. YIC founders exploiting market opportunities recognized in previous business activities and necessity entrepreneurs are the least likely to interact with universities. We highlight the role of external advisory services to realise the benefits of universities.

This article studies the role of research orientation for attracting research grants at higher education institutions in Germany. Traditionally, research activities were funded by the institutions’ core budget. More recently, extramural research funding has become increasingly important. Besides the public sector, industry provides a growing share of such funds. The results based on a sample of professors in science and engineering suggest that basic and applied research is complementarity for attracting research funding from industry. Thus, professors who conduct basic research in addition to research on the applicability of their results appear to be most successful in raising industry funds. For raising grants from public sources, it turns out that specialization is more important. Specialized research units on either basic or applied research obtain significantly more public grants which point to a substitutive relationship between basic and applied research for grants from public sources.

The literature on technology transfer offices (TTOs) focuses on the main variables explaining the performance of these organizations. The implicit strategic model considered by the literature is that the TTOs have to control all the activities, resources, competences of the value chain of the technology transfer process. The aim of the TTO is to maximize the revenues of the commercialization of academic results and its role is to manage a linear and unidirectional process. However, this model is not applicable for every university. In France, TTOs developed cooperative strategies with other local TTOs on the one hand, to pool resources and share costs and on the other hand, to structure the regional innovation system. TTOs do not anymore control internally all the activities and accept to share some of them with partners. Instead of having as unique objective to maximize the gains of technology transfer activities, TTOs set up alliances with the aim to diffuse more largely and at a higher speed the research results. The technology transfer process is considered as interactive and multidirectional. This alternative model is illustrated by a longitudinal study of a French University active since a long time in technology transfer activities.

This chapter investigates academic entrepreneurship in a resource-­constrained environment. Sequential mixed methods are adopted in three stages, namely, an initial context-specific data-gathering stage, an on-line survey, and in-depth interviews. It is revealed that entrepreneurial activity is a means of becoming resource-rich in a resource-constrained environment. In order to extract value from their environment, academic entrepreneurs adopt diversification strategies, which generate synergies between multiple academic entrepreneurial activities. Diversifying into a greater number of different activities is found to generate more synergistic effects than diversifying into a limited number of similar activities. Nevertheless, there remain synergies between those who adopt different diversification strategies, which highlight the importance of a university having a team of different academic entrepreneurs, who complement each other. Policy implications and future research avenues are considered in conclusion.

After WWII, the German economy rapidly increased, and is often described as the “Deutsche Wirtschaftswunder”. Within a short period, Germany reached zero unemployment, and human capital became the critical factor and resource in shaping the economic growth. While the bottle neck full of blue collar workers was solved by an active immigration policy that attracted people from Italy, Turkey or Greece, the lack of white collar workers and engineers still remained. At this time, public universities were unable to provide the quantity of well-educated people particularly in engineering sciences. In particular, the high opportunity costs of time made public universities less attractive compared to starting a career in the industry right after dropping out of school. In the mid-1960s, the German government decided to adapt a well-known concept from the theory of the firm – division of labor - to provide high skilled employees. A new type of university was created, the so called Universities of Applied Sciences. Public Universities are focused on basic research, while Universities of Applied Sciences (UAS) provide the economy with applied research and education. While studies at public universities can exceed four to five years, the length of study at a UAS is mainly limited to 3 years (6 semesters). After the Bologna Reform, Bachelor and Master Programs of UAS and public universities are treated equally. In the last decade, this division of labor between UAS and public universities has reached an additional objective the technology transfer process. While the role of public universities and their role within the technology transfer processes is intensively studied (Hülsbeck, Lehmann, & Starnecker, forthcoming), the impact of UAS remains rather under researched. Although they are quite successful in their cooperation with the industry and are nevertheless another backbone in the university-industry relationships, only anecdotal evidence on this type of university exists. This paper tries to shed some light on this type of university which could be a role model in particular for countries and regions where small and medium sized firms dominate the industrial landscape as they do in Germany.

A university can play an essential role in regional economic development, especially with respect to innovation and entrepreneurial. The University of Central Florida became a driver and partner to help diversify the economy from a region that was heavily dependent on tourism, hospitality and agriculture, sectors known for lower than average wages.

Shared intellectual property rights are connected with complex legal issues and therefore organizations (e.g. firms) that apply for patents have a strong incentive to avoid co-ownership on their patents. In contrast to this the share of EPO firm patent applications with a joint ownership has increased in the biotechnology industry during the last two decades as it has been observed in other industries. From this the question has to be forced, whether joint patent applications are associated with a higher economic potential compared to the patents with no joint ownership so that firms are willing to cope with the legal issues that are associated with shared intellectual property rights on patents. We measure the economic value of a patent by the number of subsequent citations it has received and empirically address this question by the application of a nonparametric matching approach on patent level. We show that there exists a positive causal relationship between the decision of a firm to jointly apply for a patent and the future economic value that is associated with the regarded patent.

In recent years M&A has been as a prominent strategy in the context of inter-firm technology transfer. Prior literature has evaluated the latter by using different types of post-merger innovation measurements. In this connection the chapter provides a framework to analyze the effects of corporate acquisitions on innovation quality. The approach presumes that an acquirer’s post-merger innovation outcome is a function of learning capabilities with respect to recent technologies.

We investigate a sample of German domestic and cross-border takeovers, in order to analyze the ex-ante determinants of post-merger innovation quality. The data is based on patent information from the German Patent and Trade Mark Office.

The results show that especially middle-aged and specialized acquirers achieve improved innovation quality subsequent to takeovers. Furthermore, the measurement via patent citations allows a more direct consideration of the value created by corporate acquisitions.

Flexibility in response to competitive pressure from globalized markets and increasingly individualized costumer desires has become vital for firms. A common strategy to address this challenge is to employ a dynamic concept of organization and reach beyond the boundaries of the firm. Accordingly, technology transfer from providers of knowledge-intensive business services attracts more and more attention.

In this context, we focus on external supply of information technology and client-side innovation. The aim of this chapter is to contribute to resolving an empirical puzzle arising from the prior literature. Some authors find beneficial effects of IT outsourcing, others underline that firms often fail to achieve expected strategic goals.

Our stylized theoretical model combines a knowledge production function framework and transaction cost economics. We hypothesize that the right balance between internal and external knowledge is critical for innovation.

The empirical application is German firm-level data covering a wide range of industries, 2003–2006. Our results largely support the theoretical arguments and suggest a positive linear relationship between the level of outsourcing and process innovation. For product innovation, we find a hump shape.

The literature on R&D subsidy programs has mainly focused on final R&D outcomes and has largely ignored the processes that operate within subsidy programs. The implementation of programs and allocation of funds might have a profound impact on the final economic outcome though.

We discuss the targeting process of R&D subsidy programs and analyze empirically the Enrolment in a particular R&D promotion program. Companies applying for the program we analyze often seem not to have complete knowledge on their projects and project partners when applying for funds. About one out of five companies does not conduct the project it was granted money for. Dropouts are not random; companies that were planning to cooperate with “high quality” R&D institutions in the scope of the project and those from core cities are more likely not to conduct their projects. In line with our expectations we are also able to show that companies which have cooperated with R&D institutions before are more likely to conduct their projects than those without cooperation experience.

How is the R&D-productivity link affected by the environment where firms locate? Are companies located with their registered offices in more R&D favorable environments better able to translate their R&D knowledge into productivity gains? Our paper tries to answer these questions analyzing - in the European context - if R&D performing companies cluster themselves in “higher-order R&D regions”, as the Economic Geography theories postulate, inducing a polarisation in terms of labour productivity in comparison with firms located in “lower-order R&D regions”. The proposed microeconometric estimates are based on a unique longitudinal database of publicly-traded companies belonging to manufacturing and service sectors. The final unbalanced sample comprises 626 European companies for a total of 3,431observations, covering the period 1990-2008. Results show that European “higher-order R&D regions” not only invest more in R&D, but also achieve more in terms of productivity gains from their own research activities. Results also show that in the case of “lower-order R&D regions”, physical capital stock is still playing a dominant role.

There is considerable evidence that regional resource endowments promote the viability of firms within those regions. University resources endowments are often portrayed as especially important to the development and success of firms, especially knowledge-based firms that benefit from faculty expertise, specialized facilities, and intellectual property. Recent research, however, suggests that the contribution of university resources endowments to firm performance and viability is contingent on the presence of complementary regional resource endowments. Thus, firms that draw resources from universities are more likely to realize performance benefits when a regional economy is rich in complementary resources. We propose that for knowledge-based startup firms, in addition to the direct positive effects of regional and university resources endowments on firm performance found in prior research, regional resource endowments availability will moderate the impact of university resources endowments on firm performance. We examine these relationships within the population of university-based incubators in the US and a sample of knowledge-based firms associated with those incubators.

The success of firms in emerging economies like India and China can be generally attributed to their low-cost R&D and manufacturing capabilities, scalable resource pool, and rapidly growing domestic demand. However, in recent times, emerging economy firms have been employing new innovation strategies to morph into higher orbits and drive profitable business growth. Increasingly, many emerging economy firms are deploying their earnings to invest in R&D and to acquire advanced technologies from developed country firms to boost their innovative capability and to drive their global business competitiveness. Drawing on recent literature on international technology transfer, this paper presents a case study of an Indian MNC to provide theoretical and practical insights into the dynamics and process of technology transfer. Lacking strategic orientation is identified as a main missing factor in recent literature.

Aim of this paper is to explore the emerging properties of business models design processes in complex contexts such as a traditional manufacturing cluster. To do we distinguish between a static and dynamic perspective on business models, profiting from a critical analysis of the recent literature. Then we define the service orientation landscape for manufacturing sectors, approaching different strands of analysis. On this canvass, we present our case scenario based on an ongoing project for the design and delivery of new business model concept for the machine tool sector, based on renting and leasing. The analysis of this case will allow us to draft some conclusions about the emerging properties of business models design processes in context different form the one traditionally used to this kind of activities: a cluster of Italian SMEs. The interesting aspects accruing form this analysis lies on the different roles played by public and semi public institutions in participating to this pilot project. Moreover, the business models’ systemic impact and strategic dimensions will be explored, showing how this tool can be considered as a systemic instrument for the governance of the innovative processes.

The automotive industry is one of the main contributors to value added, employment and exports of the Turkish economy and it has undergone major changes since the mid-nineties. Most automotive manufacturers in Turkey are either joint ventures or wholly-owned affiliates of multinational companies. Literature on global value chains point to the possibility of technology transfer occurring through backward linkages from automotive manufacturers to their suppliers. Here we analyze the existence and the importance of different types of knowledge and technology transfer mechanisms in the Turkish automotive industry. In addition, characteristics of local suppliers impacting on these transfers and their impact on firm performance are analyzed. To this end, a survey including a detailed questionnaire was administered to production/R&D managers of 158 automotive suppliers operating in Turkey in 2010. Findings confirm the existence of transfers from customers to their local suppliers on co-design and co-development activities, designing of production tools, development/improvement of quality control methods, cost reduction and design of materials. In addition, econometric analysis indicates that these transfers exert a positive effect on the performance of supplier firms.

‘Lateral migration’ refers to the application of technologies in a different sector and context from that in which they were originally developed (Pogue and Rampa, 2006). Lorentzen and Pogue (2009) and Jourdan (2010) have proposed that this is most likely to occur when there is: a significant market demand from local producers; local opportunity to test and commission new technologies; a cluster of firms that can support each other and cross fertilize ideas; and a strong base of R&D. In order to investigate these propositions a robust methodology is needed to identify the pathways along which such technology migration occurs and the ways it is facilitated or inhibited. This paper reports on a conceptual and methodological approach to investigate lateral migration of technology from the mining and energy sector in Australia. First, an econometric analysis is used to measure the extent of lateral migration of mining and energy technologies using patent, trade and input-output data sets to provide a quantitative account of which technologies are more successful than others in migrating into other sectors. Second we use a case study approach to investigate the processes that inhibit or facilitate lateral migration

The technology transfer process between a public laboratory and a company has been the subject of many publications and has been widely discussed in economic theory. This chapter highlights several newly identified asymmetries occurring between the different agents taking part in the process.

The theoretical corpus of the article draws upon empirical sources, being based on the recent experience of one of the most dynamic Technology Transfer Offices (TTOs) in France: the case of ONERA (the National Office for Aerospace Studies and Research) and the SMEs.

In such a cooperative innovation process, we will show that certain collaborative tools or practices emerge, aimed at reducing information asymmetries or acting as compensation mechanisms for other types of asymmetries between the partners at a microeconomic level, especially in France where there is a gap between the public R&D laboratories and the SMEs in terms of Technology Readiness Levels (TRLs).

We finally showcase a new tool, the Demand Readiness Level scale (DRL), which combined with the TRL is providing a powerful tool, the Innovation (process) Readiness Diagram (IRD), dedicated to better manage the Technology Transfer relationship.

This article presents and discusses Discover Markets, an initiative by funded by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research, that seeks to redefine the boundaries of research and development and promote technology transfer by including a wider range of people in the process.