Organisational Innovations for Science-Industry Interactions: The Emergence of Collaborative Research Centres in Spanish Regional Innovation Systems

This chapter analyses the creation and diffusion of collaborative research centres between science, industry and government. These organisations tend to involve a restructuring of networks of existing relationships in a region, as well as a gradual transformation of the strategies or the institutional structure of the agents involved. The organisational innovations undertaken can be interpreted as form of resilience of regional innovation systems in regard to their R&D capacity. We focus on the case of Spain, especially on the recent role of the regional governments in the promotion of new forms of science-industry collaboration. Our methodology is based on an exhaustive map of existing centres in Spain combined with a survey addressed to these centres and related documents. The results show that not all regions have the same capacity to innovate in science-industry relations despite sharing common problems of peripheral regions. The differences between centres and the organisational arrangements found are considered as examples of flexible structures to cope with diversified industrial partners and forms of knowledge transfer.