Abstract
This chapter analyses the creation and diffusion of collaborative research centres between science, industry and government. These organisations tend to involve a restructuring of networks of existing relationships in a region, as well as a gradual transformation of the strategies or the institutional structure of the agents involved. The organisational innovations undertaken can be interpreted as form of resilience of regional innovation systems in regard to their R&D capacity.
We focus on the case of Spain, especially on the recent role of the regional governments in the promotion of new forms of science-industry collaboration. Our methodology is based on an exhaustive map of existing centres in Spain combined with a survey addressed to these centres and related documents. The results show that not all regions have the same capacity to innovate in science-industry relations despite sharing common problems of peripheral regions. The differences between centres and the organisational arrangements found are considered as examples of flexible structures to cope with diversified industrial partners and forms of knowledge transfer.
Keywords
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- 1.
One example of this trend would be the number of public-private co-authorships in scientific publications. Despite having gone from 22.5 units (per one million individuals from the national population) in 2008 to 28.7 units in 2011, this figure is still very low compared to the UE-28 average, which is 52.8 units (European Commission 2010b).
- 2.
One example is the process of consolidation and agglomeration of ITCs in this region that ended in the creation of two large Technology Corporations: Tecnalia and IK4. Due to its size and critical mass, Tecnalia has become the first private centre for applied Research in Spain and the fifth in Europe, while IK4 is the European technology corporation with a higher ratio of revenue as a result of directly invoicing firms.
- 3.
The questionnaire was addressed to directors at the centres, or other administrative staff in charge. 128 centres participated in the survey, with a response rate of 59.3%. The analysis of some variables shows that there are no significant differences between the population and the sample (see also Fernández-Zubieta et al. 2016).
- 4.
In order to construct these indicators, for each centre and for each sector we added up the number of activities where that sector was the main collaborator, weighing each unit by the relevance that the interviewed party attributed that activity. Then we divided this sum by nine, which is the total number of activities, and standardised the value.
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Acknowledgments
Financial support from the Spanish Plan for I + D + I of the Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness “New science-industry relationships: Cooperative Research Centres in the Spanish R&D System” (ref. cso2010 -14880. 2010-2013) is gratefully acknowledged. Sandro Giachi also acknowledges the financial support from the FPI Formación del Personal Investigador Programme (ref. BES-2011-047258).
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Giachi, S., Fernández-Esquinas, M. (2018). Organisational Innovations for Science-Industry Interactions: The Emergence of Collaborative Research Centres in Spanish Regional Innovation Systems. In: Pinto, H., Noronha, T., Vaz, E. (eds) Resilience and Regional Dynamics. Advances in Spatial Science. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-95135-5_8
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