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The purpose of this paper is to investigate the academic side of university–firm linkages, reporting the results of research (called the “BR Survey”, a primary database) conducted in Brazil with leaders of research groups that interacted with firms. The authors analysed the answers from 662 research groups (from both universities and research institutes) to investigate whether the intensity of private funds affects the results of the interactions. The main intent is to answer the following question: Is there a difference between funding sources and the type of results achieved by research groups when interacting with firms?

To verify the impact of some variables on the perception of the main results of university–firm interactions, highlighting the impact of funding sources, the authors present a Logit Model defined with binary dependent variables. The null value is categorized as a “scientific result” (new scientific discoveries and research projects; publications, theses and dissertations; human resources’ and students’ education) and the value 1 is classified as an “innovative/technological result” (new products, artefacts and processes; improvement of industrial products and processes; patents, software, design and spin-off firms).

The authors found that the modes of interaction (relationship types) and some knowledge transfer channels, besides the number of interactions with firms, have statistically significant coefficients, so their values present different impacts on the results of the interaction. The results suggest that the Brazilian innovation policy towards a more active and entrepreneurial role of universities is fostering innovative/technological results from university–firm interactions.

The originality of the study lies on the results found that given the fact that private funding sources do not affect the conventional mission of Brazilian universities – teaching and research – university research groups should be even more incentivized to search for private funds to carry out their research. This may be a solution to the public fund scarcity and may help in reducing the historical distance between universities and firms in Brazil.

This study aims to identify the countries’ innovation factors that are determinant for them to achieve higher levels of development. In addition, the research identified which of these factors should be prioritized so the countries can move up in the rank of the most competitive.

The study used the indicators of innovation and the stage of development of 137 countries proposed by the Global Competitiveness Report published by the World Economic Forum and techniques of multivariate data analysis.

The results indicated that all the factors tested are determinant to lead the countries throughout their stages of development. The research highlights that the factors “Quality of scientific research institutions” and “Patent Cooperation Treaty (PCT) patent applications” should be equally prioritized for the countries’ development.

The results suggested that the factors Capacity for Innovation, Quality of Scientific Research Institutions, Company Spending on Research and Development (R&D), University–Industry Collaboration in R&D, Government Procurement of Advanced Technology Products, Availability of Scientists and Engineers and PCT Patent Applications are decisive for positioning countries in terms of their stage of development and should be part of their public policy and enterprises’ strategic planning.

The findings show that countries should prioritize the factors Quality of Scientific Research Institutions and PCT Patent Applications, as these factors, when acting together, predict the evolution to higher stages of development.

The purpose of this study is to propose an innovative and efficient process in urban policy-making that combines a divergent and creative method with a convergent and strategic one. At the same time, the purpose is also to propose a useful innovation to enforce the usability of both methods. On the one hand, mission-oriented policies run the risk of being overly focused on the present and of not being able to develop preparedness in organization. On the other hand, scenario development has the reverse problem it often does not point out how to use scenario narratives to inform and devise short-term strategic actions.

The paper proposes an innovative methodological approach, the mission-oriented scenarios, which hybridizes Mazzucato's mission-oriented public policy framework with Jim Dator's Manoa school four futures method. The proposed methodological innovation emerges from a urban foresight academic-led project carried out in the context of the Metropolitan City of Turin, Italy, where a first application of the mission-oriented scenarios was tested on six different focal issues (from reindustrialization to cultural policies) and the scenario narratives were used as sources for the grounding of 12 missions and 48 strategic actions towards 2030.

Mission-oriented scenarios can contribute to the generation of more sustainable and inclusive urban public policies. This methodological proposal is based on an original mix of knowledge exchange procedures borrowed from methodological approaches with different backgrounds: the mission-oriented and the archetypal scenarios. Their conjunction could support the formulation of ambitious yet pragmatic policies, giving a plurality of actors the opportunity to act and establish fruitful and lasting partnerships.

The paper reconstructs one of the first urban foresight projects carried out in a major Italian city by two prestigious universities and exposes a methodological innovation resulting from reflection on the strengths and weaknesses of the project, which opens the door to the development of a new scenario technique.

Knowledge sharing in research communities has been considered indispensable to progress in science. The aim of this paper is to analyze the mechanisms restricting knowledge sharing in science. It considers three categories of academia–industry knowledge transfer and a range of individual and contextual variables as possible predictors of knowledge-sharing restrictions.

A unique empirical data sample was collected based on a survey among 212 life science researchers affiliated with universities and other non-profit research institutions. A rich descriptive analysis was followed by binominal regression analysis, including relevant checks for the robustness of the results.

Researchers in academia who actively collaborate with industry are more likely to omit relevant content from publications in co-authorship with other academic researchers; delay their co-authored publications, exclude relevant content during public presentations; and deny requests for access to their unpublished and published knowledge.

This study informs policymakers that different types of knowledge-sharing restrictions are predicted by different individual and contextual factors, which suggests that policies concerning academia–industry knowledge and technology transfer should be tailored to contextual specificities.

This study contributes new predictors of knowledge-sharing restrictions to the literature on academia–industry interactions, including outcome expectations, trust and sharing climate. This study augments the knowledge management literature by separately considering the roles of various academic knowledge-transfer activities in instigating different types of knowledge-sharing restrictions in scientific research.

The aim of this paper is to frame the stakeholder-driven system mapping approach in the context of climate change, building on stakeholder knowledge of system boundaries, key elements and interactions within a system and to introduce a decision support tool for managing and visualising this knowledge into insightful system maps with policy implications.

This methodological framework is based on the concepts of market maps. The process of eliciting and visualising expert knowledge is facilitated by means of a reference implementation in MATLAB, which allows for designing technological innovation systems models in either a structured or a visual format.

System mapping can contribute to evaluating systems for climate change by capturing knowledge of expert groups with regard to the dynamic interrelations between climate policy strategies and other system components, which may promote or hinder the desired transition to low carbon societies.

This study explores how system mapping addresses gaps in analytical tools and complements the systems of innovation framework. Knowledge elicitation, however, must be facilitated and build upon a structured framework such as technological innovation systems.

This approach can provide policymakers with significant insight into the strengths and weaknesses of current policy frameworks based on tacit knowledge embedded in stakeholders.

The developed methodological framework aims to include societal groups in the climate policy-making process by acknowledging stakeholders’ role in developing transition pathways. The system map codifies stakeholder input in a structured and transparent manner.

This is the first study that clearly defines the system mapping approach in the frame of climate policy and introduces the first dedicated software option for researchers and decision makers to use for implementing this methodology.

Relying on mergers and acquisition transaction-level data set and adopting a more region-specific approach with a focus on industry-region pairs, this paper aims to examine how cross-border acquisitions (CBAs) have an effect, in terms of technological spillover and collaboration, on European regional clusters.

Adopting an industry-region pair approach, this study is based on a quantitative analysis of regional clusters belonging to 262 European regions and 25 patenting industries. Different thresholds of industrial specialization are used to identify clustering industries within a region. Invention performance at the regional cluster level is defined through two sets of different measurements to assess the impact of CBAs on invention quantity performance and internal and external technological collaboration.

The results reveal that CBAs have a positive and significant impact on the number of patents as well as the number of internal and external technological collaborations and that this effect is persistent over time. Furthermore, through exploring the interindustry technological spillover effect of CBAs registered in the same region of a cluster but outside the cluster itself, the authors found that CBAs in a regional cluster are inclined to produce technological spillovers within the cluster but no significant effects in the other industries of the region.

This paper is an attempt to empirically explore CBAs and technological spillover in European regional clusters. Therefore, it contributes to the debate, thanks to the use of an industry-region pair approach.

This paper investigates the effect of entrepreneurial orientation (EO) on small- and medium-sized enterprises' (SMEs) access to credit. Starting with the idea that SMEs' strategy-making process, structures and behaviour can favour credit access, the authors also explore the moderating role of bank lending technologies in shaping this relationship.

This study relies on a unique survey of Austrian and Italian SMEs which contains detailed information on access to credit, EO dimensions, relationship lending and firm-level characteristics. The authors perform stepwise logistic regressions to assess whether EO interacts with SME's access to finance, and how relationship lending enhances this relationship.

Proactiveness, autonomy and competitive aggressiveness are important constructs for improving access to bank financing. Those dimensions became more important when a relationship bank is involved, suggesting a role for relationship lending in overcoming SMEs' opaqueness. In addition, relationship lending is crucial for innovative SMEs in overcoming credit denial rates.

The small sample did not allow to analyse the effect of EO on discouraged borrowers. Furthermore, alternative measures of relationship lending (such as geographical proximity or the length of the relationship) and the share of credit granted by the relationship bank would have been interesting to further validate our results.

This study shows that EO dimensions and the type of lending technology are relevant for the financial success of SMEs. More precisely, the authors show that diversity within the banking system helps innovative, autonomous, proactive and competitive SMEs. These important pieces of soft information are injected into the final lending decision when a relationship bank is involved. The evidence suggests the need for SMEs to interact with local banks to fully exploit their EO posture.

To the authors' knowledge, this paper is the first attempt to analyse whether relationship lending can affect the EO–credit access relation.