Abstract
Collaborative university-industry R&D is currently acknowledged as a key determinant of regional innovation. Several motivations to engage in such collaboration networks have been identified, either concerning industry partners—who seek to complement their knowledge-related resources and convert them into competitive factors—or academic partners—who find in these networks the opportunity to deal with real challenges, to create job opportunities for students and to ensure important sources of additional funding for basic research and teaching activities. This chapter studies the case of the Polytechnic of Leiria, characterising the recent evolution and structure of innovation co-creation networks established with industry in the last 12 years. A network analysis combining two different data sources revealed the dominant profile of partners with whom the Polytechnic of Leiria has interacted in co-promotion projects, in terms of the nature of the entity, size, sector of activity, international exposition, and geographical location.
TopIntroduction
The role of Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) in regional economic and social development has heavily influenced policy over the past 20 years (Acs et al., 2013; Etzkowitz & Leydesdorff, 1999). Nowadays, HEIs play a crucial role in regional innovation ecosystems, particularly in regions where the entrepreneurial tissue is mainly composed of small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), mostly exposed to international competition (Cunningham et al., 2019).
Aiming to respond to their so-called third mission, during the last decades, HEIs have increasingly incorporated this dimension of contributing to society in their strategic mission and orientation (Compagnucci & Spigarelli, 2020; Harlow, 2021). Such positioning of academia is frequently associated with the quadruple helix innovation model, according to which knowledge creation and sustainable development result from the close and constant interaction and feedback mechanisms among the different actors of the innovation process, including academia, enterprises, government and civil society (González-Martinez et al., 2021; Morisson & Pattinson, 2020).
In order to contribute to regional innovation, competitiveness and sustainable development, HEIs and enterprises exchange resources and integrate them to achieve a specific outcome through different platforms and channels that may assume a wide range of formats and that are different in size and scope (Bozeman et al., 2013). These channels enhance mutual knowledge sharing between academia and enterprises or other public and private entities, ranging from short-term and unilateral modes of knowledge and technology transfer, such as research services' commercialisation and intellectual property rights licensing, to more complex co-creation processes, namely through R&D collaborative projects and joint university-industry laboratories (Alexandre et al., 2021; Meissner et al., 2022). In sum, the metaphor of the ivory tower applied to HEIs is more and more the exception than the rule (Etzkowitz, 2014).
Public policy initiatives to encourage and support collaboration between academia and industry have played a crucial role in this paradigm change, motivated essentially by efficiency and cohesion arguments. Regarding efficiency, policymakers acknowledge market failures associated with private financing of R&D activities, mainly because they usually require substantial amounts of investment. In contrast, the results in terms of innovation, highly risky and uncertain, may be partially appropriated by others in the market through spillover effects to other enterprises. In European Union, fostering innovation has become a priority since the Lisbon Agenda in 2000, aiming to maintain EU competitiveness in the global market and improve the quality of life of people (Morisson & Pattinson, 2020). Innovation policy in European Union also addresses cohesion objectives, given that big differences remain in innovation performance between distinct European regions, ultimately leading to divergent development indicators. Hence, besides Horizon Europe, currently, the European Union's most relevant programme for research and innovation, national pluriannual programmes, co-funded by European Union funds through Cohesion Policy (namely European Regional Development Fund), also allocate funding instruments to foster innovation, targeting the lagging regions and, particularly, SME.
Key Terms in this Chapter
NBERIS: Non-business entities of the research and innovation system comprise Higher Education Institutions, Research Centres, Collaborative Laboratories, Technological Centres, and other entities whose main function is to ensure an interface between academia and enterprises.
Innovation co-creation: This is a procedure of collaborative innovation under which different partners, combining several types of entities with complementary knowledge and competencies, engage in interaction and knowledge sharing to create innovative products or processes.
SMEs: enterprises that employ less than 250 people and have an annual turnover that does not exceed 50 million euros or an annual balance sheet total that does not exceed 43 million euros.
Entrepreneurial Universities: Universities that deploy several strategies and mechanisms to contribute to regional development, acting as central actors of institutional collaboration with enterprises, local, regional, and national government and civil society to facilitate the generation, dissemination and exploitation of knowledge and technology.
Co-promotion R&TD Projects: A specific type of Research and Technological Development project promoted in Portugal, supported by public funding (including European Structural Funds), which aim to strengthen the competitiveness and internationalisation of SMEs through the creation of new products, processes or systems or the introduction of significant improvements in existing products, processes or systems.
Exporter enterprises: Enterprises in which at least 50% of annual turnover comes from exports or at least 10% of annual turnover comes from exports, provided that the value of these exports exceeds 150,000 euros.
Absorptive capacity: An enterprises' ability to acknowledge the value of new knowledge and be able to assimilate and explore it for commercial purposes.