The effect of triple helix cooperation on business innovation: The case of Spain
Introduction
Innovation has been recognised as a key driver of economic development (González-Pernía et al., 2015). This argument is not new. Almost a century ago, Schumpeter described the positive impact that the discontinuous emergence of new combinations (innovations) had on economic development (Schumpeter 1934). Consequently, there is a global consensus that innovation, together with science and technology, plays a central role in achieving the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, adopted by all United Nations Member States in 2015 (Walsh et al., 2020). As a result, innovation has become increasingly important over the last few decades (Badillo et al., 2017).
Today, a firm's ability to innovate determines its chances to gain sustainable competitive advantage; knowledge has become a key strategic asset for firms, more than any other resource (Grant 2002; Grant 2013). However, most firms lack the necessary means to innovate. For this reason, it is increasingly common for firms to resort to collaborative R&D strategies with other agents, with the ultimate goal of accessing a broader base of resources and knowledge while diversifying (Meoli et al., 2013).
Collaboration is a crucial factor in innovation, making it both faster and easier (Triguero et al., 2018). Therefore, the UN 2030 Agenda document highlights the importance of articulating mechanisms that facilitate cooperation to foster knowledge sharing and access to innovation, this being a crucial issue for the achievement of the SDGs (Walsh et al., 2020). Collaboration in R&D provides the necessary organisational tools to transfer and develop new knowledge among partners, as well as an incentive to overcome the difficulties posed by possible spillover effects (Husted and Michailova 2010; Un and Rodríguez 2018). Firms can thus make use of the transfer of external and internal knowledge and technology to acquire the resources and capabilities that they need, ultimately increasing their ability to innovate (Belderbos et al., 2004; Nieto and Santamaría 2007; Mudambi et al., 2007; Hannigan et al., 2015).
There is a large number of academic studies about collaboration in R&D and business innovation, focusing either on relations with certain partners (customers, suppliers, competitors, universities, etc.) (Takeishi 2002; Wu 2012; Ritala and Hurmelinna-Laukkanen 2013; Fidel et al., 2015; Guimón and Salazar-Elena 2015), or a given set of them (Tether 2002; Nieto and Santamaría 2007; Un et al., 2010; Un and Asakawa 2015; González-Pernía et al., 2015; Badillo et al., 2017; Un and Rodríguez 2018). Still, authors such as Zhang et al. (2019) invite to contribute to the theoretical literature with studies that investigate the effects of innovation collaboration for the parties involved.
Previous studies have adopted different theoretical approaches, but none of them have examined the issue from the Triple Helix perspective and considering the synergic effect on business innovation. The Triple Helix approach, which forms part of considerable literature on innovation systems, identifies certain agents whose interaction is of key importance for promoting innovation: universities-industry-government (Etzkowitz and Leydesdorff 1995; Linton 2018).
The objective of this study is to describe and analyze the possible synergic effect of the cooperation of Triple Helix agents, university, industry and government, on business innovation. Use is made of the data available in the PITEC (Panel de Innovación Tecnológica) database, taking a sample of 11,769 Spanish firms from different sectors for the 2007–2016 period, with a total of 94,347 observations. The main contribution of this study to the literature about the benefits of cooperation for innovation lies precisely in this new theoretical approach, besides providing empirical evidence for the Spanish case.
The paper is organised as follows. The following section presents the Triple Helix theoretical model and explains how it can be used to describe the synergic effect of its main agents’ cooperation in R&D on business innovation. The third section describes the methodology used in the study. This is followed by the results of this analysis. Finally, the results and the study's most important conclusions and implications are discussed.
Section snippets
The triple helix model, business innovation and cooperation
The Triple Helix model was proposed by Henry Etzkowitz and Loet Leydesdorff in 1995 in order to explain innovation as the result of collaborative creative processes involving three main agents: universities, industry and governments (Etzkowitz and Leydesdorff 1995; 2000; Leydesdorff and Etzkowitz 1996; Etzkowitz 1998). According to this model, the interrelations between these three agents create a climate favourable to the generation of synergies, innovation in the knowledge economy (
Sample
This study uses the Panel de Innovación Tecnológica (PITEC) unbalanced database published by Instituto Nacional de Estadística (INE) and Fundación Española para la Ciencia y la Tecnología (FECYT). The data was collected in the course of two nationwide surveys: ‘Encuesta sobre Innovación Tecnológica en las Empresas’ and ‘Estadística sobre actividades I + D’. The database adopts the theoretical framework established by the European ‘Community Innovation Survey’ (CIS) and the innovation
Results
Table 2 shows the relationship between type of innovation and business cooperation, considering the number of Triple Helix agents involved in cooperation. A positive association is seen between the number of firms that cooperate and innovation. Regarding firms that cooperate, 73.4% innovate in products (versus 32.4% of the firms that do not cooperate), 69.5% innovate in processes (versus 35.4% of the firms that do not cooperate) and 54.3% innovate in both products and processes (versus 19.6% of
Discussion, conclusions and implications
This study represents a contribution to our understanding of the effect of R&D cooperation on business innovation (in products, processes or a combination thereof), providing new evidence from the perspective of the Triple Helix approach.
After analysing a sample of Spanish firms from the PITEC database, through binomial logistic regression, the results confirm the positive effect of cooperation on business innovation; Triple Helix agents have been considered both individually and in various
Sample credit author statement
Alejandro Hernández-Trasobares: Conceptualization, Methodology, Validation, Formal analysis, investigation, resources, writing original draft, writing-reviewing and editing, funding acquisition.
Josefina L. Murillo-Luna: Conceptualization, Methodology, Validation, Formal analysis, investigation, resources, writing original draft, writing-reviewing and editing, funding acquisition.
Declaration of Competing Interest
None.
Funding sources
This work was supported by the Government of Aragón (Group Reference CREVALOR: S42_17R) and co-financed with FEDER 2014–2020 “Construyendo Europa desde Aragón”. In addition, we acknowledge financial support from research projects ECO2016-77,843-P / ECO2017-86,305-C4-3-R, funded by MINECO, Spanish Ministerio de Economía y Competitividad.
Acknowledgments
The authors are sincerely grateful to the comments received from anonymous referees. Also, the authors would like to thank to the Spanish Institute of Statistics (INE) and Spain's Science and Technology Foundation (FECYT), for providing the data used.
Alejandro Hernández-Trasobares has a PhD in Economics and Business Administration and is an associate professor in the Department of Business Management and Organization of the University of Zaragoza (Spain). He teaches at the Faculty of Social Sciences and Work. His-research focuses in the areas of management, family business, innovation and high growth firms. He has published in national and international journals and he has participated as a speaker in national and international conferences.
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Alejandro Hernández-Trasobares has a PhD in Economics and Business Administration and is an associate professor in the Department of Business Management and Organization of the University of Zaragoza (Spain). He teaches at the Faculty of Social Sciences and Work. His-research focuses in the areas of management, family business, innovation and high growth firms. He has published in national and international journals and he has participated as a speaker in national and international conferences.
Josefina L. Murillo-Luna has a PhD in Economics and Business Administration and is an associate professor in the Department of Business Management and Organization of the University of Zaragoza (Spain). She teaches at the Faculty of Social Sciences and Work. The main research areas in which she works are related to the strategic environmental behavior of companies, corporate social responsibility and social entrepreneurship. She has published in national and international journals and he has participated as a speaker in national and international conferences.
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Corresponding author.