Market-value oriented or technology-value oriented? ——Location impacts of industry-university-research (IUR) cooperation bases on innovation performance

Abstract

As an effective way to deepen the dynamic docking and advantage integration between market entity and technological entity, the joint establishment of scientific research bases plays an important role in promoting the long-term and stable cooperation between industry, university and research. However, no research has explored whether the site selection of IUR cooperation bases has an impact on innovation performance. In view of this, the influence of the location of IUR bases on innovation performance is investigated in this paper through the adoption of the enterprise survey data carried out by Jiangsu Provincial Commission of Economy and Information Technology in 2013. It is indicated in the results show that (1) The joint establishment of scientific research bases is more conducive to promoting the enterprise innovation than joint research, commissioned research and technology transfer and other IUR cooperation modes; (2) Compared with the practices of establishing scientific research bases in universities, the practice of establishing scientific research bases within enterprises is more conducive to improving the innovation performance of enterprises, that is to say, the market-value oriented IUR cooperation mode is more conducive to enterprise innovation; (3) The moderating effect shows that the absorptive capacity has positively moderated the location impacts of scientific research bases on innovation performance, that is, the higher the educational level of employees is, the more significant promotion effect of establishing scientific research bases within enterprises on innovation performance may become. This study provides the advantages of joint establishment of scientific research bases compared with other IUR cooperation modes, and empirical evidence of the siting effect of IUR cooperation based on innovation performance, and provides references for the literature. The research results will be helpful for the body of IUR to understand the differential impact of different cooperative base locations on innovation performance.