Collaboration in R&D

In this factsheet we look at four indicators of public-private partnership for R&D:

1. Industry collaboration with HE institutions and research institutes according to Eurostat’s Community Innovation Survey
2. Private funding of research performed by HE institutions and research institutes
3. The ‘University-Industry collaboration in R&D’ indicator in the World Economic Forum’s Global Competitiveness Index
4. The ‘University-Industry Co-authorship’ indicator in the CWTS Leiden Ranking
    

1. Industry collaboration with HE institutions and research institutes

Eurostat’s Community Innovation Survey asks companies about the extent to which they collaborate with HE institutions and research institutes as part of their innovation activities. The figure below shows what proportion of innovative companies work with HE institutions (research universities and universities of applied sciences). It can be seen that Dutch companies work with HE institutions less frequently than companies on average in the EU-27. It is also clear that large companies are much more likely to do so than small and medium-sized companies. Nevertheless, 74% of large companies do not collaborate with the HE sector (CIS 2014-2016).

The following figure shows the proportion of innovative companies that collaborate with research institutes (both public and private). Here, the Netherlands scores below countries with which the Netherlands is often compared. Furthermore, the Dutch scores for collaboration with research institutes are significantly lower than those for collaboration with HE institutions.

2. Funding by companies of research performed by HE institutions and research institutes

Another way of identifying R&D collaboration is to look at private funding of research performed by HE institutions and research institutes. The two figures below show that:

• Dutch companies fund (or co-fund) a relatively large proportion of the research performed by HE institutions compared with other countries and
• Dutch companies provide a relatively large proportion of the funding of research performed by research institutes (such as the Royal Dutch Meteorological Institute (KNMI))

The proportion of private funding in 2019 has increased relative to 2016 for both the HE institutions and research institutes from 7.8% to 8.3%.

3. ‘University-Industry collaboration in R&D’ according to World Economic Forum’s Global Competitiveness Index

The World Economic Forum publishes its Global Competitiveness Index every year. It compiles the index by looking at the results of the Executive Opinion Survey (conducted among 13,000 managers in 139 countries). One of the indicators in the Global Competitiveness Index specifically measures ‘University-Industry collaboration in R&D’ (indicator 12.04c). The figure below shows that the Netherlands scores relatively highly for 2019 compared with the reference countries, occupying a fifth position for this indicator in the Global Competitiveness Index.  Comparison with figures for 2008-2009 shows that the Netherlands’ score has risen slightly.

4. University-Industry Research collaboration according to the Leiden ranking

In the Leiden ranking it is possible to compare the world’s largest research universities with regard to research collaboration between the universities and industry. The score is based on the number of publications co-authored by universities and companies.

The figure below shows the ‘UIC intensity’ (university-industry collaboration) of the 13 Dutch universities. This indicator is defined as the proportion of university-industry co-publications in the total number of publications of the university in question according to the Web of Science. The technical universities score high (>10%), in particular Eindhoven university of technology. They are followed by Wageningen University & Research (>10%) and University of Twente. TU Eindhoven takes the 8th place in the international worldwide ranking.

Most indicators show that there is a lot of collaboration between public research institutions and private institues. The share of private funding at universities is high and a lot is published, especially at technical universities, in collaboration with the business community. The picture presented by indicators that directly visualize cooperation is mixed. In the community innovation survey, the Netherlands scores slightly lower than the European average, while we are only ahead of four countries worldwide in the global competitiveness index.