Technology transfer services impacts on open innovation capabilities of SMEs

Abstract

Given the limited R&D investments, small and medium enterprises (SMEs) need to orchestrate their innovation capabilities and remove technological bottlenecks properly. To enhance their possibilities and results from collaborative activities, they can refer to intermediaries that foster knowledge and technology transfer (TT) in an inter-organisational setting. This paper aims to study how the services provided by TT intermediaries can impact specific open innovation (OI) capabilities of firms acquiring these services. OI capabilities are distinguished into potential absorptive capability, realised absorptive capability, external identification and external commercialisation. We conducted an embedded case study research, with the TT services offered by AREA Science Park, the leading Italian Scientific and Technological Park, as the main unit of analysis. The analysis of the patterns of OI capabilities enhanced in eight SMEs advised by AREA revealed that the types of TT services provided by AREA could be grouped into specific packages, summarised in a resulting framework of impacts of intermediary TT services. The study results contribute to the interplay between TT and OI literature and are helpful for both TT intermediaries and SME managers in designing and selecting the services according to the capabilities they would like to enhance and the type of collaborative innovation they would like to pursue.