Composition of inventor teams and technological progress - The role of collaboration between academia and industry

It is generally claimed that universities provide the scientific basis for future technological progress. Still, empirical evidence of the impact of direct links between universities and firms remains weak and is often inconsistent. This paper aims at contributing to the literature by analyzing how direct academic involvement affects the output of inventive activities of research teams with different organizational backgrounds. By applying a unique dataset of German academic and corporate patents, we find that boundary-spanning knowledge production with academic inventors raises the innovative performance of SMEs and MNEs. Finally, in line with previous research, the results generally indicate a limiting effect of geographical proximity, while teams with academic involvement appear to be less affected.