The Production of Academic Technological Knowledge. An Exploration at the Research Group Level

Public research institutions have a key role in a knowledge-based society as they lead scientific research, and generate patentable technology directly applicable to industrial productive processes. In this paper, we address the latter role. Several well-known papers have dealt with the production of university patents at the level of universities and laboratories; however, despite the relevance of research groups in national research systems, their capacity as producers of patents has been neglected. In this paper, we fill this gap by testing the effect of previous collaborations and the scientific background of the group on the production of knowledge, measured by the number patents. In the framework of a knowledge production function, we estimate several empirical count models with a sample of 1,120 research groups affiliated to the three major public research institutions in Spain. Our findings suggest that the production of patents at the research group level is positively and significantly correlated with the variables capturing private collaboration and scientific background. The results also point to significant differences in the production of technological knowledge across institutions and areas of research.