Join us for the Manchester Institute of Innovation Research Seminar Series 23/24 with Muthu De Silva, Professor of Innovation and Entrepreneurship and Head/Associate Dean Research, Innovation and Knowledge Exchange, Faculty of Business and Law, Birkbeck, University of London.
Register via Eventbrite: https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/mioir-seminar-series-professor-muthu-de-silva-tickets-723261122487
How do firms shape their interactions with universities to build economic, intellectual and reputational capital?
Authors – Muthu De Silva; Federica Rossi and Nicola Searle
Abstract:
The success of university-industry collaborations (UICs) very often depends on how they are initiated: the initial decisions made on the form of collaboration, and how to approach collaborators, can have crucial implications on how the collaboration will develop and achieve success. In this study, we investigate how firm’s intention to build different types of capital - economic, intellectual and reputational - affects their views concerning the most effective form of interaction and their choice of how to approach the university. Our empirical analysis builds on an original dataset collected through an online survey of 190 British firms that collaborate with universities, integrated with additional firm-level variables gathered from secondary sources, and a further set of in-depth interviews with 16 of the survey respondents. Our findings suggest that firms that intend to develop economic capital from UICs are more likely to find channels that support knowledge acquisition as effective, whereas firms that intend to develop reputational capital are more likely to find interaction channels that support knowledge co-creation as effective. Instead, firms that intend to develop intellectual capital from UICs consider both knowledge acquisition and knowledge co-creation interaction channels as effective. In turn, firms are more likely to initiate interactions through institutional-level sources when they perceive interaction channels that support knowledge acquisition as effective; they are more likely to initiate interactions through individual-level sources when they perceive channels that support knowledge co-creation as effective. This way we advance our understanding of capital building as simply an output of successful UICs, to an objective which influences firms’ decision making in the initial stages of the collaboration. Our findings thus offer practical implications to firms and universities as to how they should initiate interactions depending on the intensions of firms to develop certain types of capital.
Speaker's Bio:
Muthu De Silva is a Professor of Innovation and Entrepreneurship and Head/Associate Dean Research, Innovation and Knowledge Exchange, Faculty of Business and Law, Birkbeck, University of London, UK. Her research contributes to our knowledge on co-creation, defined as “actors of ecosystems such as – universities, businesses, intermediaries, governments, and society – working together by integrating resources, knowledge and networks to simultaneously generate business and social value”. She has published in world-leading (ABS 4*/3*) journals such as Research Policy, Journal of Organizational Behaviour, British Journal of Management, R&D Management, and Technovation etc. She has secured major grants from UKRI, Innovate UK, Intellectual Property Office, EU and British Academy/Leverhulme, OECD, and British Academy of Management. She is a co-investigator of the Research and Innovation Caucus, £7 million establishment by the UKRI to become a world leading centre of excellence in research and innovation funding. She is a fellow of Royal Society for the encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce. She is in the Editorial Board of the British Journal of Management (ABS 4*) and the Journal of Business Research (ABS 3*).
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The Manchester Institute of Innovation Research runs a series of regular seminars given by visiting speakers to Manchester. These seminars are open to anybody who is interested in science, technology and innovation policy and management.
