The impact of local and external university knowledge on the creation of knowledge-intensive firms: evidence from the Italian case

Andrea Bonaccorsi (), Massimo Colombo (), Massimiliano Guerini () and Cristina Rossi-Lamastra ()

Small Business Economics, 2014, vol. 43, issue 2, 287 pages

Abstract: This paper investigates how far in space university knowledge goes to breed the creation of knowledge-intensive firms (KIFs), depending on the nature (either codified or tacit) and quality of this knowledge. We consider the impact of knowledge codified in academic patents and scientific publications and tacit knowledge embodied in university graduates on KIF creation in Italian provinces in 2010, while distinguishing between local university knowledge created by universities located in the same province and external university knowledge created by universities located outside the province. Our econometric estimates indicate that the positive effects of scientific publications and university graduates are confined within the boundaries of the province in which universities are located. Conversely, the creation of new KIFs in a focal province is positively affected by both local and external university knowledge codified in academic patents, even though the positive effect of this external knowledge rapidly diminishes with geographic distance. Furthermore, the above effects are confined to high-quality universities; low-quality universities have little effect on KIF creation. Copyright Springer Science+Business Media New York 2014

Keywords: Local university knowledge; External university knowledge; Codified knowledge; Tacit knowledge; Creation of knowledge-intensive firms; University quality; I23; M13; O33; O18 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2014
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (48)

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1007/s11187-013-9536-2 (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:sbusec:v:43:y:2014:i:2:p:261-287

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.springer. ... 29/journal/11187/PS2

DOI: 10.1007/s11187-013-9536-2

Access Statistics for this article

Small Business Economics is currently edited by Zoltan J. Acs and David B. Audretsch

More articles in Small Business Economics from Springer
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().