Innovation intermediaries for university-industry R&D collaboration: evidence from science parks in Thailand

Psychological pathways in enterprise participation in university-industry collaboration: how does social cognitive theory explain participation willingness?

Background

With the in-depth implementation of innovation-driven development strategies, University-Industry Collaboration (UIC) has become an important pathway for promoting technological innovation and industrial upgrading. However, enterprises, as one of the main collaboration entities, show significant differences in their participation enthusiasm and depth. Existing research mainly explores UIC influencing factors from resource dependence and knowledge management perspectives, with insufficient exploration of the enterprise cognitive dimension. This study constructs an analytical framework based on social cognitive theory to systematically examine how multiple cognitive factors and environmental factors influence enterprise decision-making in UIC participation.

Purpose

To reveal how observational learning, self-efficacy, outcome expectations, and policy support jointly influence enterprises' decision-making process in UIC participation, and to explore the moderating role of organizational characteristics in this process.

Methods

Through a questionnaire survey of 300 enterprises in China's coastal regions, this study employed Structural Equation Modeling (SEM) to analyze the influence mechanisms of observational learning, self-efficacy, outcome expectations, and policy support on enterprises' willingness to participate in UIC.

Results

The research found that: (1) observational learning, self-efficacy, and outcome expectations have significant positive impacts on enterprise participation willingness (β = 0.285, 0.312, 0.356, p < 0.001), with outcome expectations showing the strongest direct effect; (2) risk and cost perceptions significantly inhibit participation willingness (β = -0.245, p < 0.001), this indicates enterprises carefully weigh potential benefits against perceived risks when making UIC participation decisions; (3) policy support indirectly promotes participation willingness by enhancing enterprise self-efficacy (β = 0.298, p < 0.001); (4) enterprises' innovation capabilities and resource endowments positively moderate the relationship between policy support and participation willingness (β = 0.187, p < 0.01).

Conclusion

This research extends the application of social cognitive theory in inter-organizational collaboration research, provides empirical evidence for policy design and enterprise practice, and emphasizes the need to enhance UIC effectiveness through capacity building, differentiated policy support, and risk management.

Beyond ambidexterity: universities and their changing roles in driving regional development in challenging times

Around the world today, universities are expected to play a unique role as creators of regional growth and innovation. While there appears to be a consensus that the role of universities has been expanded, critiques show that the contribution of universities to their regions is still not well defined. There have been some developments in the literature on the concept of modern universities such as the triple helix, entrepreneurial university and engaged university. However, those concepts focus on enforcing universities' roles in a single domain such as entrepreneurship, innovation, or civic engagement. Little is known about how universities can facilitate regional growth that goes beyond knowledge transfer activities such as spin-off creation, licensing, and patenting. This paper contributes to a more comprehensive understanding of universities' role in regional growth through the theoretical lens of ambidexterity. Using ambidexterity, universities with a regional focus were distinguished from those engaged in research commercialization and traditional third-mission roles. Through two case studies, this study found that teaching, research, and engagement should not be separated, since they can serve both economic and social missions. As a result, a new model of multidextrous universities is proposed where universities meet both economic and social missions through teaching, research, and engagement. Contrary to previous contributions which presented universities as ambidextrous organizations where tension appears only between research commercialization and research publication or between teaching and research, this study suggests that universities need to overcome tensions and incorporate a sense of place in all activities to successfully contribute to regional growth.

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.