The Role of Universities in Innovative Regional Clusters. Empirical Evidence from Romania

The traditional role of the universities involves education, basic research and science. In the last few decades, new functions have emerged such as knowledge and technology transfer to industry, commercialization of knowledge, and playing an active role in national and regional innovative systems. This holds particularly true for high-technology and knowledge-based sectors, where scientific input is of key importance in innovative processes. This paper proposes an analysis of the relationship between potential innovative clusters and the research activity of universities in Romania, and reveals the influence of universities on the development of innovative regional clusters.