Innovating from university–industry collaboration: the mediating role of intellectual capital
Journal of Intellectual Capital
ISSN: 1469-1930
Article publication date: 7 September 2023
Issue publication date: 17 November 2023
Abstract
Purpose
University–industry (UI) collaboration is essential for knowledge and technology exchange between higher education institutions and industries, enabling enterprises to accelerate innovation. However, few studies have investigated the collaborative innovation mechanism through which UI collaboration can enhance the accumulation of firms' intellectual capital (IC) and how this, in turn, affects their innovation-driven development.
Design/methodology/approach
Drawing from the knowledge management and collaborative innovation theory, this research proposes a theoretical framework of the inter-organization relationship between enterprises and universities to investigate the influence mechanism of UI collaboration, including academic engagement and commercialization, on corporate performance as well as the mediating role of IC by employing survey that covers 177 UI collaborations.
Findings
Empirical results show that human capital and relational capital fully mediate the relationship between academic engagement UI collaboration and corporate economic performance, while human capital partially mediates the relationship between commercialization UI collaboration and corporate economic performance. Additionally, structural capital and relational capital partially mediate the relationship between academic engagement and corporate innovation performance, while structural capital fully mediates the relationship between commercialization and corporate innovation performance.
Originality/value
This study empirically investigates how academic engagement and commercialization impact corporate performance (i.e. innovation dimension or economic dimension). It uncovers this relationship's underlying mechanism by documenting the IC's mediating impact.
Keywords
Acknowledgements
This research is supported by the China National Natural Science Foundation (No. 72104027), the China Postdoctoral Science Foundation (No. 2021M690388), the Zhejiang Soft Science Program (No. 2020C25028) and Zhejiang Province Philosophy and Social Science Planning Project (No: 21NDJC032YB). The authors are also grateful for meaningful feedback from Zhaohui Zhu, Yang Liu, Jia Wei and Ziyan Xu. Of course, responsibility for the text lies sole with the authors.
Citation
Yin, X., Li, F., Chen, J. and Zhai, Y. (2023), "Innovating from university–industry collaboration: the mediating role of intellectual capital", Journal of Intellectual Capital, Vol. 24 No. 6, pp. 1550-1577. https://doi.org/10.1108/JIC-10-2022-0207
Publisher
:Emerald Publishing Limited
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