Outcomes of science-industry collaboration: Factors and interdependencies

Science-industry collaboration is one of the major channels for transferring new scientific ideas into economic applications. Whereas the factors leading to collaboration are reasonably well understood, the determinants of the outcomes generated by such collaboration are unknown. This paper fills this gap by a new conceptualisation of collaboration outcomes and proposes factors that influence the generation of outcomes. We distinguish three different types of outcomes, namely scientific ones, commercialisable ones, and follow-up cooperation. We argue that scientific factors influence the generation of scientific outcomes, and economic factors the generation of commercialisable outcomes; interaction factors are proposed to influence the emergence of follow-up cooperation. We further propose that these outcomes depend on each other and hence are co-generated. We test our propositions with survey data from scientists in the German state of Thuringia. We asked scientists about characteristics of a particular collaboration and its outcomes. Multivariate probit estimations show that scientific factors positively related to scientific outcomes, and interaction factors are relevant for the follow-up cooperation. However, for economic factors, we find mixed evidence for their relation to commercialisable outcomes. As to outcome interdependence, we only find support for scientific outcomes to be co-generated with each of the other two types. Our results provide implications for policymakers and science managers on how to design funding policies and their evaluation.