University-industry interactions in applied research: The case of microelectronics

In the first part of the paper we discuss the pattern of research in microelectronics, illustrating the reasons why, in order to achieve distinguished scientific performance, universities need to collaborate with industry, and in particular academic researchers need to interact with industrial ones by face-to-face knowledge exchanges. In the second part, using patent data integrated with information collected through interviews, we measure the extent and intensity of the ties of academic with industrial researchers, and apply social network analysis to reconstruct the network of collaborations. The picture that emerges (from this Italian case) is fully consistent with the specific research pattern. Collaboration is based on teams of researchers from the two spheres, and strong connections are associated with high scientific performance. Moreover, border-crossing collaborations tend to be driven by cognitive proximity and personal relationships. (c) 2006 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.