Do firms located in science and technology parks enhance innovation performance? The effect of absorptive capacity

The effect of science and technology parks on tenant firms: a literature review

Science and technology parks (STPs) are non-spontaneous agglomerations aimed at encouraging the formation and growth of on-site technology and knowledge-based firms. STPs have diffused worldwide, attracting significant, and often public, investment. However, there are contrasting evidence and insights on the effectiveness of these local development, technology and innovation policy tools. This paper provides a comprehensive and systematic review of the STP literature (221 papers, 1987–2021), focusing especially on quantitative papers aimed at assessing the park effect on tenant’s performance. We perform an in-depth quantitative analyses, which allows us to go beyond the inconclusiveness reported in previous review papers, showing that the likelihood of finding positive STP effects increases considerably with sample size. We discuss the limitations of this literature and offer some suggestions for future research.

Does Strategic Alliance Knowledge Heterogeneity Truly Promote Innovation Performance?

There is a certain degree of difference in the knowledge and skills of alliance members, and the knowledge heterogeneity among them will have an impact on innovation. The study of the relationship between strategic alliance knowledge heterogeneity (SAKH) and enterprise innovation performance (IP) has important practical significance for enterprise-development strategies. Based on the resource-dependence theory, this study discussed the mediating effect of exploratory learning (EXR) and exploitative learning (EXI) on the impact of SAKH on IP. Using surveys collected from Chinese manufacturing enterprises with strategic alliances, we found that (1) SAKH and IP have an inverted U-shaped relationship; (2) EXR and EXI partially mediate the relationship between SAKH and IP. From the perspective of managers’ attention, this study not only extends the boundaries of knowledge heterogeneity and innovation-related research but also provides a theoretical and practical framework for the promotion and development of alliance enterprise innovation.

How do human capital and R&D structure facilitate FDI knowledge spillovers to local firm innovation? a panel threshold approach

This paper examines how local firms’ structure of human capital and R&D strategies influence their absorption of FDI knowledge spillovers. Using a unique dataset of Chinese firms in Beijing Zhongguancun Science Park from 2009 to 2015, our panel endogenous threshold models confirm two thresholds for human capital diversity and one threshold for R&D diversity in facilitating FDI spillovers. When human capital diversity is below its second threshold, FDI presence positively influences local firms’ innovation performance; while above the second threshold, the FDI turns to an insignificant impact. Besides, when R&D diversity is below its single threshold, FDI spillovers are positively associated with local firms’ innovation; otherwise, the effect of FDI is insignificantly negative. Our findings highlight the importance of human capital and R&D structures in local firms’ absorptive capacity. Local organizations need to keep diversifying their human capital and R&D strategies to learn from FDI knowledge but avoid allocating their efforts evenly upon sub-categories within the two resources.

Systematic literature review paper: the regional innovation system-university-science park nexus

Recent work on Region Innovation Systems (RIS) has emphasised the importance of universities. Until recently, however, related insights into the dynamics of this relationship in respect of the specific role of the science park have been limited. This paper presents a systematic review identifying the key roles of each actor in relation to innovation. We link the dynamic roles performed by the university between science parks and the RIS. Our results enable us to identify how the key activities performed by the university change during its interrelations within the RIS and with the science park. Our analysis of the literature distinguishes between three sets of relationships through which the university plays differing roles: RIS-university, RIS-university-science park, and university-science park. Respectively, the University’s relationships between these different RIS actors focuses on: resource sharing, brokerage, and commercialisation-exploitation. Secondly, we find that within each of these relationship types the university can perform three types of roles: on knowledge co-creation, acting as conduit, and inter-organisational relationship building. Distinguishing between these differing relationships and roles enables us to identify a total of nine dynamic roles performed by the University, which include: provision of information, channels of communication, infrastructure, regional networking, building research collaboration, acting as knowledge intermediaries, economic development, technological change and commercialisation processes, and start up creation and commercialisation. The review identifies several gaps in the literature in need of further research, and suggests that university relationships with RIS, interlinked with those between the university and science park itself, are important factors affecting science park innovation performance.