Repercusión de la Triple Helix y las Dificultades para Innovar en los Objetivos de Innovación: España, 2007-2013

Resumen:La Triple Helix facilita y favorece la innovación que, a pesar de ser básica para la supervivencia empresarial en épocas de crisis, se ve negativamente afectada por las dificultades percibidas para hacerlo. Esta investigación, realizada con datos del Instituto Nacional de Estadística español, revela que, en las grandes empresas se afianza la relación positiva innovación-Triple Helix; mientras que en las PYME carece de importancia, prevaleciendo la incidencia de las dificultades. Las conclusiones animan a las empresas a entablar relaciones de colaboración con los ejes de la Triple Helix, para la adquisición y utilización de conocimiento para innovar.Abstract:Surviving in a global world and in constant transformation requires, in large measure, to generate new knowledge and innovation capacity from it. In this sense, the application of information systems impels in a large degree both the diffusion of knowledge and innovation. In fact, the best ideas for innovation arise from the interaction between the company's specific capabilities and external knowledge. This theory is driven by the Triple Helix model proposed by Leydesdorff and Etzkowitz, promoting bilateral relations between the industry, university and government axes, to expand knowledge in society and economy. For this, it facilitates formal and informal interactions between public and private economic agents, and tries to reduce the barriers to innovation that act as factors that hinder this process. These barriers are accentuated in economic crisis environments and make necessary for interactions for innovation to be more numerous and deep. This paper attempts to reveal the evolution and causal relationships of innovation activities in pre-post economic crisis, as well as the Triple Helix model and perception about the difficulties to innovate, considering the size of the company. The study focuses on the Spanish case during the period 2007-2013 and on the responses to the Survey on Innovation carried out by the National Statistics Institute for those years. A univariate descriptive analysis shows the evolution of the variables on the importance of: information received from Triple Helix axes, factors that hinder innovation, and innovation activities. Then, through a multivariate analysis using SEM methodology (structural equations), a causal model is presented to know the degree of incidence of Triple Helix and the factors that hinder innovation in the prioritization of innovation activities and their evolution. It is estimated that the contributions of this article to the literature are mainly four: to provide an analytical understanding of the organizations' innovation activities in terms of their relationship with Triple Helix axes and the barriers to innovation; Provide an empirical investigation of the quantitative impact of the information received from different actors of the Triple Helix axes and the perceived difficulties to innovate in innovation activities; Offer a differentiated view by size of company (this last point allows to understand the quantitative impact in the SMEs, on the one hand, and the big companies, on the other hand, besides the global behaviour, of the causal relations raised); Finally, to provide an overview of the evolution of the indicators and their quantitative impact from a period prior to the economic crisis (2007) to the period when we begin to get out of financial crisis (2013). The analysis companies position regarding the importance given to the information received from the internal agents and the Triple Helix offers divergent tendencies by size of company. While the tendency of SMEs is to give more importance to information received from external agents, large companies increase the importance given to internal information. Also, there are several tendencies both by axis and in the agents, that compose them. If we focus on industry axis all companies tend to downplay the information received from suppliers and competitors, while that granted to customers is almost maintained for SMEs and increase in large companies. The university axis offers interesting percentage increases, especially when it comes to large companies. This behaviour is also seen in the government axis, although with different trends. Thus, the relevance granted to this information by large companies shows a continuous and significant growth, but the importance given to this information by SMEs, (although the result for 2013 is positive) is decreasing. Concerning perceived difficulties to innovate, these perceptions are strongly affected by the macroeconomic factor of the economic and financial crisis, and they suffer a significant increase in their importance when it comes to hampering innovation activities in the groups analysed. This is not the case with microeconomic factors, such as the high cost of innovation, knowledge and the role of marketing, which are becoming less important while the factor to find cooperation associates acquire more importance As a result, Spanish companies, especially SMEs, are becoming aware of the importance of belonging to collaboration-cooperation networks involving university and government agents. In this way, they benefit from the positive synergies that, in terms of innovation, arise from the interactions between the three axes. Continuing with this group, even though the most important information for all companies is still received from the agents of the industry axis, this has been losing importance in favour of the university axis. But this change of trend towards the university axis is not enough, since the incidence of information from the Triple Helix in the prioritization of objectives is very low, and the predisposition to innovate in products/services and to drastically reduce costs (especially labour ones) as an effective solution to deal with an unfavourable environment is still holded. The situation in the collective of large companies does not differ significantly from the previous one, although in this case, the importance given to the information coming from the agents of the university axis and from the government axis gains more ground. In addition, there is a notable, positive and significant impact of the information obtained from the Triple Helix in the innovation objectives. However, Spanish companies keep positions more typical of the Industrial Society than the Knowledge Society, and focus their innovations on products / services, forgetting areas as important today as the design, distribution and the organization itself. This is because they focus on reducing costs, to palliate their difficulties of access to finance and the lack of support, factors that are perceived as the most important barriers to innovation. Despite all this, the situation is gradually changing, as an increasing number of them attaches great importance to the information received by other external agents when establishing their innovation activities. This shows that more and more managers / leaders of companies opt for the path of people-centred management that focuses their efforts on the needs of their groups of interest, including society. This awareness entails an increase in interaction with the three axes of the Triple Helix. The result of the analysis shows that the change is still small and companies must integrate cooperation in their vision as an essential element for their good progress and include in their road map membership to associations that can facilitate both to make themselves heard by the government and to know the opportunities that this offers. In turn, the government must establish spaces, organizations... that favour access to innovation policies and alternative sources of funding to all companies, especially SMEs, since the latter is still considered the difficulty par excellence at the time of innovation. Above all, the different public agencies / institutions must make a great effort to ensure that SMEs lose their fear and suspicions of everything that may come from them, to facilitate access to information and provide them with alternative financing lines. A response to both needs is the creation and monitoring of sectoral or thematic groupings, which will oversee integrating the three axes of Triple Helix and of engaging them, promoting the transmission and generation of knowledge that becomes innovation in partner organizations. They will include suppliers of materials and services, financial institutions, companies from related sectors, distributors, specialized consultants, technology centres, universities and higher education institutions, business or professional associations. These groups have proven to be successful in various Regional Spaces, as manifested by any of the existing ones in the Basque Country.