Knowledge Transfer between Universities and Knowledge Intensive Business Services: An Empirical Study

Introduction

Knowledge is the product of universities that thereby contribute towards fostering productivity and innovation, factors fundamental to boosting development and regional competitiveness (Martin, 1998; Muller, 2001; Howells & Tether, 2004; Toivonen, 2004; Koch & Stahlecker, 2006; Tolstoy, 2009). The rising number of studies on the importance of entrepreneurship at the regional level, as well as the characteristics of location, reveal how the key to founding new companies would seem to be knowledge and hence throwing the spotlight on knowledge spillovers generated by universities and other research and development (R&D) institutions. Furthermore, some of the knowledge generated emerges out of cooperation between companies and public research institutions (Varga, 2000; Audretsch & Lehmann, 2005; Riddel & Schwer, 2003). According to Acs et al. (2006), entrepreneurial activities are tending to be ever higher in standard with investment in new knowledge remaining relatively high while companies, especially new companies, simultaneously making recourse to true sources of knowledge (universities and R&D). Meanwhile Varga (2002) studies the location of knowledge spillovers as a type of economic agglomeration and a means of contributing to regional economic development and as such deserving priority within the context of political practices. Furthermore, Roura (2009) holds how the employment of individuals who have completed higher education reflects on the development and competitiveness of regions. Entrepreneurship also plays a role in regional development as first defended by Schumpeter (1934, 1939, 1942). The entrepreneur represents the primary driving force behind economic development. Indeed, entrepreneurship is able to roll out the innovation enabling profits to be obtained through assuming the risks inherent to creativity. Furthermore, such entrepreneurialism, particularly in the case of new companies, and especially high technology and/or knowledge intensive activities, may originate inside universities with many student engaged in developing projects in the course of their studies, which they later go onto implement and commercialise (Smilor, Gibson & Dietrich, 1990; Steffensen, Rogers & Speakman, 2000; Feller, Ailes, & Roessner, 2002). According to EIRMA (2007), the importance of the transfer of knowledge and cooperation between companies and universities is of great value due to its major input into the development of regional competitiveness.

Correspondingly, interest in Knowledge Intensive Business Services (KIBS) has steadily risen ever since such companies were identified as generating added value to the economy (Acs, 2002; Autio & Acs, 2007; Henrekson & Johansson, 2010). In this way, KIBS are perceived as being of great strategic importance given that they are in the vanguard of innovation practices as well as constantly carrying out practices of overall great importance to the development and diffusion of knowledge (Tether & Tajar, 2008; Acs, Braunerhjelm, Audretsch, & Carlson, 2009). As renderers of knowledge intensive services, the presence of KIBS in a specific location is frequently considered as an important leverage of regional industrial competitiveness (Muller & Zenker, 2009). From the perspective of many authors, there is a clear correlation between the employment rate accounted for by KIBS entities and the level of productivity of non-KIBS companies in the regions hosting the former (Dall’erba, Percoco, M. & Piras, 2007; Delmar & Wennberg, 2010). However, there are also studies that take this viewpoint further and differentiate between the KIBS universe breaking down such companies into the professional and the technological with the latter deemed to display a greater propensity to employ individuals with higher education than professional KIBS (Frell, 2006; Corrocher, Cusmano & Morrison, 2009).