University-industry cooperation and its impact on the innovation performance of firms in China: A conceptual model

This paper aims to extend our current understanding of how university-industry (UI) cooperation affects the innovation performance of firms. In particular, this paper develops a conceptual model to illustrate the cause-and-effect relationships between UI cooperative research and firms' innovation performance. In order to do so, first, relying on insights from the resource- and knowledge-based theories of the firm and the literature on relational embeddedness, we present a theoretical assumption of “the relational embeddedness of UI cooperation → firms'external knowledge acquisition → the innovation performance of firms”. Then, we combine the results of prior studies on the above three aspects and the evidence from four theory-building case studies of Chinese UI cooperative research projects to formulate and verify a series of empirically testable research propositions, which therefore deepen and refine our knowledge of the above theoretical assumption.