Finding your ideal (foreign) non-academic partner: Implications for university-industry collaboration, in peripheral and metropolitan regions?

This paper develops a theoretical framework, and a set of testable propositions, on how collaboration with non-academic partners located abroad might affect businesses’ absorptive capacity, and businesses’ propensity to engage in collaboration with universities, depending on the characteristics of the region. The present document also includes a research agenda with the goal of testing the propositions, in a further developed version of the paper. It is hypothesized that businesses in peripheral regions will be able to develop their absorptive capacity to a greater extent, if they are engaged in collaboration with foreign non-academic partners, and that these improvements in absorptive capacity will increase the ability of businesses to engage in university-industry collaboration. It is assumed that peripheral regions will provide access to a small variety of potential non-academic partners (such as suppliers, customers, competitors or technical centres). Because of this limitation, firms might have a harder time in finding non-academic partners from which they can learn (that is, partners that can provide access to novel knowledge, but similar enough to facilitate learning). Those firms that collaborate with foreign non-academic partners, however, can have an easier time in contacting partners from which they can learn, and these engagements can incentivise that businesses develop their absorptive capacity, and their propensity to engage in university-industry collaboration. It is also hypothesized that businesses in metropolitan regions will not increase their absorptive capacity as a result of collaborating with foreign non-academic partners, and that these collaborations will not increase the likelihood that businesses in metropolitan regions engage in university-industry collaboration. It is assumed that due to the broader variety of organisations available in metropolitan regions, businesses will not have to opt for international collaboration, in order to contact non-academic partners from which they can learn.