University-firm collaboration has been regarded as central to the innovation performance of firms and, at aggregate level, of countries. These linkages have been widely promoted as part of innovation policy in many countries. However, there are no conclusive studies of the dynamics of these interactions in developing countries and most of the research on the topic has focused on one side of a two-sided interaction. This gap in our understanding is particularly relevant in the case of developing countries since their innovation systems are 'immature.' This thesis attempts to explain how multi-level factors shape the incentives for agents to engage in collaboration. The analysis reveals conflicting incentives on both sides of university-firm interactions. The productive and institutional environment, as well as the public policy under which academics, universities, and firms operate, create, often unintended, incentives both for and against collaboration. Increasing understanding of these interactions helps to align policy design. By studying university-firm collaboration in Chile, this thesis aims at advancing scholarship in four key ways: (i) by studying university-firm linkages in a developing country that possesses comparative advantages in natural resources; (ii) by incorporating management and innovation theories in the study of innovation incentives, which, until recently, have only been studied using market failure analysis in developing country settings; (iii) by using a novel analytical approach that combines the analysis of the supply and demand sides of these linkages, while also incorporating the multi-level factors influencing them; and (iv) by assessing the impact of university-firm collaboration on the innovation performance of a sample of Chilean firms using a novel dataset specially prepared for this thesis. This quantitative analysis provides valuable insight about the type of firms that benefit from collaboration with universities and about the type of innovations activities that produce these benefits.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:bl.uk/oai:ethos.bl.uk:729897 |
| Date | January 2016 |
| Creators | Rojas, Claudia Paz Contreras |
| Contributors | Fu, Xiaolan ; Sanchez-Ancochea, Diego |
| Publisher | University of Oxford |
| Source Sets | Ethos UK |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Electronic Thesis or Dissertation |
| Source | https://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid:370e8366-eb30-4084-bb6d-cda6bc374a45 |
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