Sources of innovation and industry–university interaction: Evidence from Spanish firms

In this paper we use a sample of Spanish innovative firms to identify the determinants of R&D cooperation agreements between five types of partners: firms that belong to the same group; customers and suppliers; competitors; universities; public research centres. We focus on the determinants of R&D cooperation between innovative firms and universities. We used the Spanish version of the Community Innovation Survey (CIS-3) to obtain data about the R&D cooperation of 4150 innovative firms in Spain. To obtain empirical evidence about the determinants of this cooperation, we adopted an integrated approach that enables us to compare the effects of sectorial and individual determinants on the choice of partners. Our results show that a firm's cooperation activities are closely linked to the characteristics of the industry and the characteristics of the firm. These include R&D intensity, size, whether the firm belongs to a group, product and process innovation, and access to public funds for R&D activities. Internal R&D and agreements with customers, suppliers and competitor partners also increase firm's propensity for R&D cooperation with universities.