University-Industry Cooperation in the Context of the Regional Innovation System in Russia: A Case of the Tomsk Region

Abstract

Today universities receive a very close attention as they are viewed as crucial institutional actors and drivers of socio-economic development in national innovation systems. The types of university-industry linkages as well as the extent of such interaction are seen as an assessment tool to measure the efficiency of the university performance within regional innovation systems. Given the entrepreneurial character of the modern universities in transformation, this article investigates university-industry linkages to draw on systemic model for university-industry indicators developed to assess the university performance on the regional level. By analyzing government initiatives of the past decade intended to spur research activities in Russian universities and more specifically university-industry cooperation, authors shape and discuss several types of university-industry cooperation in Russia. Some of these types can be described as traditional and have been successfully exploited by universities as conventional cooperation channels with external actors. Some types of cooperation arise due to recent government initiatives, thus, the impact of these linkages is still arguable. The analysis in this paper builds on official regional and federal (national) level statistics to assess university-industry cooperation for 6 public universities in the region of Tomsk, Russia. The limitations of quantitative assessment are discussed, since the results of the study shape only several dimensions of university-industry interaction visualized through Russian official statistics. For multi-faceted analysis of university-industry interaction on the regional level, in-depth studies such as qualitative institutional analysis or expert interviews/surveys are required.