Industry-University Collaboration and Commercializing Chinese Corporate Innovation

Abstract

We construct a comprehensive dataset of medium- and large-sized industrial firms and research universities in China and examine how Chinese firms’ commercialization of their technologies is related to their experience in industry-university collaboration (IUC). We propose that firms’ IUC experience constitutes an inimitable complementary asset that facilitates their technology commercialization. Our empirical analyses show that firms generate more new product sales and produce more product-oriented patents when they have more patents that are co-assigned to universities or when they have more academic publications coauthored with university staff in the past. Such relation is strengthened when firms have higher absorptive capacity, when firms are in industries that depend more on basic science, and when firms are located closer to their collaborating universities. Additional tests point out four channels through which firms’ IUC experience benefits their technology commercialization: knowledge acquisition, talent recruiting, direct technology transfers, and technological complementarity.

Keywords: Industry-University Collaboration, Corporate Innovation, Technology Commercialization, Technology Spillovers, Knowledge Acquisition, Talent Recruitment

JEL Classification: O31, O33