Open innovation and universities. Insights from an interregional survey

The article presents the results of an empirical study carried out within the “Open Research Platform” (ORP) subproject of “European Collaborative and Open regional Innovation Strategies” (EURIS). In the frame of this subproject a survey was carried out to investigate companies’ technology transfer practices with universities in four regions of the European Union, i.e. Navarra (Spain), Lodz region (Poland), Stuttgart region (Germany) and Western-Transdanubia (Hungary). The main objectives of the investigation were to explore: i) to what extent knowledge transfer activities at higher education institutions and research organizations serve the open innovation model? and ii) what the role is of higher education institutions in the technology transfer system of the examined regions? In the first section, the relevance of the survey under the open innovation paradigm is discussed then the main conclusions of the survey are presented. Finally, an open innovation collaboration model is introduced that provides both companies and universities with some suggestions to make their collaboration more effective.