Knowledge Spillovers from Universities within the Austrian Innovation System - Determinats of R&D Collaborations and Knowledge Interactions between Universities and Firms

The analysis of innovation and technological change, their determinants and impacts on economic growth and competitiveness has received inereasing attention in economics and, regional science in recent years. Among the various factors influencing successful innovation activities and associated technological change, special attention is paid to the role of interactions and knowledge spillovers between actors in an innovation systerm. In this view, knowledge is regarded as a factor of production. For actors in innovation systems, there are principally two sources for acquiring knowledge, i.e. undertaking own R&D efforts (production of new knowledge) or absorbing knowledge from other actors through different channels of knowledge exchange. The proposed research project deals with the latter by focusing on selected knowledge flows between two main actors. Its purpose is to analyse knowledge spillovers - and their determinants - from universities to the enterprise sector within the Austrian innovation system. In the absence of large corporative R&D departments, the university sector represents the most important knowledge producer in Austria. Therefore, knowledge flows from universities to firms may be regarded as a major source for knowledge accumulation in industry. Two major research questions will be addressed: 1. Which pattern of knowledge interaction does exist between universities and the enterprise sector, i.e. through which channels is knowledge exchanged from universities to firms and in which fields of technology do knowledge spillovers cluster? 2. What are the determinants for the intensity of knowledge spillovers from university departments to the enterprise sector? While there is a large number of different channels of knowledge exchange the study restricts to the analysis of five types of knowledge spillovers between universities and the enterprise sector: 1. formal R&D cooperations such as joint research projects and contract research (which are assumed to represent an input indicator of knowledge spillovers associated with research collaborations) 2. joint publications and joint patenting by university and firm members (which are assumed to represent an output indicator of knowledge knowledge spillovers associated with research collaborations) 3. knowledge exchange through the absorption of codified knowledge (produced at universities) by firms 4. knowledge spillovers through personnel mobility from universities to firms 5. knowledge spillovers through spin-off formations of new enterprises. In general, empirical analysis of knowledge spillovers within innovation systems is considerably hampered by a lack of adequate information and proper indicators. This is also true in the case of Austria. Consequently, major efforts will be undertaken in the proposed research project to utilize various sources of data in order to identify and quantify knowledge spillovers as mentioned above. For this purpose, the follwing indicators are proposed (all being differentiated by fields fo research and by industries to which firms belong to: the number of joint research projects (including contract research) between universities and firms, and the number of personnel employed at universities in the course of such projects, the number of co-publications by university and firm members in international journals, the number of patents jointly applied by universities and firms, the number of citations of university pulbications in papers written by firm members, the number of citations of university publications cited in patent applications by firms, the number of graduate students moving to R&D departments of firms, the number of spin-off formations of new enterprises by former university members or graduate students. Special emphasis is laid on the identification and empirical analysis of some relevant determinants of the extent of knowledge spillovers from university departments to firms. A conceptual model is proposed to analyse the effects of university department`s characteristics on the extent of knowledge spillovers. The model distinguishes two major groups of independent variables: On the one hand, organisation-specific variables cover characteristics of university departments relevant for research collaborations with firms such as size, location and the academic discipline. On the other hand, research-specific variables attempt to seize the relevance and quality of research activities carried out at a department such as the department`s reputation, experiences in R&D collaboration so far and the research orientation.