In recent decades firms have intensified the exploration of external sources of knowledge to enhance their innovation capabilities. This paper presents an empirical analysis of the factors that affect the importance of academic knowledge for firms’ innovative activities. An integrated approach...

While significant attention is given to the concept of absorptive capacity as a source of competitive advantage in firms, a major drawback exists in the way it is unidimensionally defined in micro-level analysis. The paper addresses this limitation and reconceptualizes absorptive capacity as a...

To innovate, firms constitute a ‘knowledge-capital’, defined as a set of information and knowledge produced, acquired and used in the value creation process. In this paper, we focus on small and medium-sized companies (SMEs) and study their ability to develop their own knowledge-capital as...

This study examines the impact of regional competitiveness on the innovative activity of entrepreneurial firms. Based on a unique and hand collected data set of publicly listed high technology start-ups and university regions, this paper tests how regional competitiveness and university...

In this paper we study how and to what extend (i) individual working conditions (e.g. peers, working atmosphere, work contract incentives, wage satisfaction), (ii) institutions (e.g. technology transfer offices, patent exploitation agencies, chair in entrepreneurship or awards for academic...

Measured by per-capita publication measures, Sweden is an academic powerhouse. Hence, its inability to commercialize on these accomplishments is a puzzle. This paper attributes this failure to the top-down nature of Swedish policies aimed at commercializing these innovations as well as an...

This paper examines how university research alliances and other cooperative links with universities contribute to startup employment growth. We argue that “scientific absorptive capacity” at the startup is critical for reaping the benefits from university research alliances, but not...

The recent 'scientification' of commercial technology has brought the interface between universities and industry into sharp focus. In particular, academic entrepreneurship, i.e., the variety of ways in which academics take direct part in the commercialization of research, is widely discussed....

What national policies are most efficient in promoting the commercialization of university-generated knowledge? We address this question by characterizing and evaluating the policy pursued in Sweden and the US, two countries that put a great deal of resources into university R&D, but follow very...