Proximity and the use of public science by innovative European firms

By A. Arundel, Aldo Geuna. 2004

481 citations recorded by the source corpus.

We use the results of the policies, appropriation and competitiveness in Europe (PACE) 1993 survey of Europe's largest firms to explore the effect of proximity on knowledge flows from affiliated firms, suppliers, customers, joint ventures, competitors and public research organisations to innovative firms. The focus is on the last. First, we find that public science is among the most important sources of technical knowledge for the innovative activities of Europe's largest industrial firms. Then, after comparing the PACE results with the Community Innovation Survey II (1997) and the Carnegie Mellon Survey (1994), we use the unique information from the PACE survey on the geographic location of knowledge sources and the methods used to access them to develop an econometric analysis of proximity and location. The importance of proximity for sourcing knowledge from public research increases with the quality and output of domestic public research organisations and the importance given to public science by the respondents. It declines with an increase in the firm's R&D expenditure, activity in the North American market and the importance to the firm of codified basic research results. Surprisingly, firms that find informal contacts to be an important method for acquiring public research results are more likely to find proximity less important, even though proximity allows firms to access tacit knowledge. This effect is primarily limited to European countries, suggesting the development of a ‘European Research Area’.

Subfields: Economics and Econometrics, Strategy and Management

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/f9265c94987576e901c78e76d2ca5ad5de2c2334

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Citations in the corpus

Working with distant researchers—Distance and content in university–industry interaction (2010, unknown): “Arundel & Geuna (2004) and Levy et al. (2009) are able to confirm the expectation that geographic proximity facilitates interaction.”
The impact of local and external university knowledge on the creation of knowledge-intensive firms: evidence from the Italian case (2014, unknown): “Thus, we add to the research on the role of knowledge nature in shaping the impact of distance on the use of university knowledge (e.g., Arundel and Geuna 2004), by studying this issue with respect to new firm creation.”
Technology transfer organizations: Services and business models (2013, background): “A third and dominant stream of earlier studies focuses its attention on linkages forged between KTTOs and firms (Arundel and Geuna, 2004; Geuna et al., 2006; Kodama, 2008; Laursen and Salter, 2004; Sharma et al., 2006; Wright et al., 2008; Yusuf, 2008).”
Searching high and low: what types of firms use universities as a source of innovation? (2004, unknown): “In almost all studies of university–industry links, researchers have examined the impact of firm size on university–industry linkages (Link and Rees, 1990; Schartinger et al., 2001; Cohen et al., 2002; Mohnen and Hoareau, 2003; Arundel and Geuna, 2004 ).”
Economic implications of alternative scholarly publishing models : exploring the costs and benefits. JISC EI-ASPM Project. A report to the Joint Information Systems Committee (JISC) (2009, background): “207 Arundel and Geuna (2004, p3) noted that estimates of the rate of return to publicly funded research ranged between 20% and 60%. The Productivity Commission (2007) concluded that the marginal rate of return to R&D elicited through public sector support lies between 35% and 100%.”
Innovation capability building and learning mechanisms in latecomer firms: recent empirical contributions and implications for research (2012, background): “For example, Arundel and Geuna (2004) show that, compared with European firms in general, these sources of inputs into innovation are much more important for relatively large, R&D-intensive firms that already have deep innovative capabilities.”
Exploiting Entrepreneurial Opportunities: The Impact of Entrepreneurship on Growth (2007, background): “ Arundel and Geuna (2004) propose that as long as there is a delay between the discovery of knowledge and its codification, inter-personal interactions are premier mechanisms for knowledge flows.”
In Search of Performance Effects of (In)Direct Industry Science Links (2008, background): “9 Concentrating on surveying Europe’s largest industrial firms only, Arundel and Geuna (2004) find that public science is amongst the most important sources of technical knowledge for innovation activities.”
Engaging Excellence? Effects of Faculty Quality on University Engagement with Industry (2011, unknown): “However, compared to alternative modes of interaction (Table 1), patenting and academic entrepreneurship are only moderately important means through which industry appropriates university-generated knowledge (Arundel and Geuna, 2004; Perkmann and Walsh, 2007; Faulkner and Senker, 1994; D'Este and Pa”
Exploring the Knowledge Filter: How Entrepreneurship and University-Industry Relationships Drive Economic Growth ∗ (2006, background): “University-industry linkages are proposed as the second mechanism facilitating the exploitation of knowledge and the flow of ideas (Mansfield and Lee, 1996; Fritsch and Lukas, 2001; Arundel and Geuna, 2004; Meyer-Krahmer and Schmoch, 1998).”
The structure and evolution of industrial clusters: Transactions, technology and knowledge spillovers (2006, background): “13 On the role that public research and universities may play in local economic development see, among others, Etzkowitz and Leydesdorff (2000), Boucher et al. (2003), Arundel and Geuna (2004) .”
The nexus between science and industry: evidence from faculty inventions (2012, background): “Academic inventions are considered to be among the most important sources of knowledge for innovation activities in the U.S. (Cohen et al., 2002) and Europe (Arundel and Geuna, 2004).”
Factors affecting university-industry R&D projects: The importance of searching, screening and signalling (2006, background): “5 The role of firm size in influencing the propensity of firms to collaborate with PROs is one of the basic tenets of the literature on university–industry relationships as acknowledged in recent empirical investigations (Mohnen and Hoareau, 2003; Cohen et al., 2002a; Arundel and Geuna, 2004; Laurse”
Cooperation patterns of incubator firms and the impact of incubator specialization: Empirical evidence from Germany (2010, background): “Pevious research shows that particularly firms with a high R&D intensity tend to engage in cooperations with academic institutions (Arundel and Geuna, 2004; Fontana et al., 2006).”