Firm-university alliances: does distance matter? Massimo G. Colombo, Massimiliano Guerini , Cristina Rossi Lamastra This paper explores whether and how geographical, social and cognitive proximity and affect the Abstract. likelihood of collaboration between high-tech entrepreneurial ventures and universities. In addition, the impact of university quality on firm-universitiy collaboration is considered. We use a sample composed by 79 Italian young high-tech entrepreneurial ventures that have collaborated with at least an Italian university in the period 2004-2008, resulting in 96 university-industry collaborations. We run a logistic regression where the dependent variable is the probability that the entrepreneurial venture collaborates with a university. We also interact social, cognitive proximity and university quality with geographical proximity. Results show that geography matters in shaping university-industry collaborations. Furthermore, our findings suggest that social and cognitive proximity are among the main determinants of collaboration, while university quality do not play a significant role. Finally, we find that social proximity actually reduces the negative effect of distance on the likelihood that the entrepreneurial venture collaborates with the university. university-industry collaborations, geographical proximity, cognitive proximity, social proximity, Keywords: high-tech entrepreneurial venture. Acknowledgements: the financial support of Regione Toscana Project LILIT: I Living Labs per l’Industria Toscana (PAR FAS REGIONE TOSCANA Linea di Azione 1.1.a.3) is kindly acknowledged. Preliminary draft 1 Introduction The study of university-industry collaborations is nowadays a highly relevant issue that has key policy implications. Indeed, in the last years, universities have significantly re-orientated their academic research towards industrial applications and have shown a stronger propensity to collaborate with firms so as to obtain research funds from them (Bonaccorsi et al 2012a). Likewise, collaborations with universities help firms in accessing scientific and technological knowledge developed by universities (hereafter: thus university knowledge), playing a crucial role in allowing firms to keep the rapid pace of the science and technology This is particularly important for entrepreneurial ventures operating in high-tech industry (henceforth: high-tech entrepreneurial ventures). These firms require leading-edge knowledge to conduct their production processes and successfully implementing their business model.
Firm-university alliances: does distance matter? Massimo G. Colombo, Massimiliano Guerini , Cristina Rossi Lamastra Abstract. This paper explores whether and how geographical, social and cognitive proximity and affect the likelihood of collaboration between high-tech entrepreneurial ventures and universities. In addition, the impact of university quality on firm-universitiy collaboration is considered. We use a sample composed by 79 Italian young high-tech entrepreneurial ventures that have collaborated with at least an Italian university in the period 2004-2008, resulting in 96 university-industry collaborations. We run a logistic regression where the dependent variable is the probability that the entrepreneurial venture collaborates with a university. We also interact social, cognitive proximity and university quality with geographical proximity. Results show that geography matters in shaping university-industry collaborations. Furthermore, our findings suggest that social and cognitive proximity are among the main determinants of collaboration, while university quality do not play a significant role. Finally, we find that social proximity actually reduces the negative effect of distance on the likelihood that the entrepreneurial venture collaborates with the university. Keywords: university-industry collaborations, geographical proximity, cognitive proximity, social proximity, high-tech entrepreneurial venture. Acknowledgements: the financial support of Regione Toscana Project LILIT: I Living Labs per l’Industria Toscana (PAR FAS REGIONE TOSCANA Linea di Azione 1.1.a.3) is kindly acknowledged. Preliminary draft 1 Introduction The study of university-industry collaborations is nowadays a highly relevant issue that has key policy implications. Indeed, in the last years, universities have significantly re-orientated their academic research towards industrial applications and have shown a stronger propensity to collaborate with firms so as to obtain research funds from them (Bonaccorsi et al 2012a). Likewise, collaborations with universities help firms in accessing scientific and technological knowledge developed by universities (hereafter: university knowledge), thus playing a crucial role in allowing firms to keep the rapid pace of the science and technology This is particularly important for entrepreneurial ventures operating in high-tech industry (henceforth: high-tech entrepreneurial ventures). These firms require leading-edge knowledge to conduct their production processes and successfully implementing their business model.