Patterns of collaboration for technology transfer in Spanish universities

Universities are relevant actors in research and development (R&D) and, increasingly, in innovation. These institutions play a significant role in the generation and transfer of scientific and technical knowledge. They may also adopt an orchestration role, in order to combine diverse national and international sources of knowledge through collaboration networks that can enhance their ability to transfer it to industry and society. In this paper, we seek to demonstrate that, if this pattern is confirmed, larger benefits can be achieved and translated into better performance and greater impacts on the development of local innovation ecosystems. Using data on patents granted to universities by the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) from 1990 to 2017, we study the technological performance of Spanish universities to illustrate how collaboration patterns affect the relative impact on their innovative activities. Our contribution identifies a dual complementary and geographically dispersed pattern of collaboration in the evolution of universities’ technological performance, while the existence of public-private partnerships and the generation of international linkages are found to be prevalent factors (even dominant over R&D).