Innovation practices in emerging economies: Do university partnerships matter?

Maribel Guerrero (), David Urbano () and Fernando Herrera ()
Additional contact information
Maribel Guerrero: Northumbria University
David Urbano: Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona
Fernando Herrera: Tecnológico de Monterrey

The Journal of Technology Transfer, 2019, vol. 44, issue 2, No 13, 615-646

Abstract: Abstract Enterprises’ resources and capabilities determine their ability to achieve competitive advantage. In this regard, the key innovation challenges that enterprises face are liabilities associated with their age and size, and the entry barriers imposed on them. In this line, a growing number of enterprises are starting to implement innovation practices in which they employ both internal/external flows of knowledge in order to explore/exploit innovation in collaboration with commercial or scientific agents. Within this context, universities play a significant role providing fertile knowledge-intensive environments to support the exploration and exploitation of innovative and entrepreneurial ideas, especially in emerging economies, where governments have created subsidies to promote enterprise innovation through compulsory university partnerships. Based on these ideas, the purpose of this exploratory research is to provide a better understanding about the role of universities on enterprises’ innovation practices in emerging economies. More concretely, in the context of Mexico, we explored the enterprises’ motivations to collaborate with universities in terms of innovation purposes (exploration and exploitation) or alternatives to access to public funds (compulsory requirement of being involved in a university partnership). Using a sample of 10,167 Mexican enterprises in the 2012 Research and Technological Development Survey collected by the Mexican National Institute of Statistics and Geography, we tested a multinomial regression model. Our results provide insights about the relevant role of universities inside enterprises’ exploratory innovation practices, as well as, in the access of R&D research subsidies.

Keywords: Innovation process; Resources and capabilities; Dynamic capabilities; Enterprise & university partnerships; Entrepreneurial universities; Emerging economies; Mexico (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I23 M21 O31 O38 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2019
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (13)

Downloads: (external link)
http://link.springer.com/10.1007/s10961-017-9578-8 Abstract (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:kap:jtecht:v:44:y:2019:i:2:d:10.1007_s10961-017-9578-8

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.springer. ... nt/journal/10961/PS2

DOI: 10.1007/s10961-017-9578-8

Access Statistics for this article

The Journal of Technology Transfer is currently edited by Albert N. Link, Donald S. Siegel, Barry Bozeman and Simon Mosey

More articles in The Journal of Technology Transfer from Springer
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().