Leveraging knowledge as a competitive asset? The intensity, performance and structure of universities’ entrepreneurial knowledge exchange activities at a regional level

Qiantao Zhang (), Niall G. MacKenzie (), Dylan Jones-Evans () and Robert Huggins ()
Additional contact information
Qiantao Zhang: Trinity College Dublin
Niall G. MacKenzie: University of Strathclyde
Dylan Jones-Evans: University of the West of England
Robert Huggins: Cardiff University

Small Business Economics, 2016, vol. 47, issue 3, No 6, 657-675

Abstract: Abstract Universities are no longer considered to be isolated islands of knowledge, but as institutions increasingly engaged with a range of external partners through entrepreneurial activities. This paper examines the associations between the intensity and performance of knowledge exchange activities undertaken in UK universities with non-academic actors. Drawing on data concerning the structural factors of interactions of universities in the UK with external partners, the paper sheds further light on the nature of these activities through a prism of competitive and uncompetitive regions in order to better understand how universities may be able to leverage both their knowledge and partnerships more effectively as competitive assets. On the one hand, it is found that academics in uncompetitive regions are more intensively engaged in entrepreneurial activities but generate less income from them than their counterparts in competitive regions, suggesting that there are differences in the income-generating capacity of academics across regions. On the other hand, academic knowledge is found to be more strongly bounded within a certain distance in uncompetitive regions whilst geographical distance seems less of a hindrance to academics in competitive regions.

Keywords: Entrepreneurial universities; Knowledge exchange; Academic entrepreneurship; Regional development; Competitiveness; H4; I2; O3; R1 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2016
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (6)

Downloads: (external link)
http://link.springer.com/10.1007/s11187-016-9759-0 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:sbusec:v:47:y:2016:i:3:d:10.1007_s11187-016-9759-0

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

DOI: 10.1007/s11187-016-9759-0

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 ().