How does product innovation affect the performance of university-industry collaboration? A dynamic knowledge transfer perspective

Product innovation is gradually being noticed in university-industry collaboration (UIC), yet research on its impact on performance is scarce. A dynamic knowledge transfer perspective is presented in our paper, which is an integration of the dynamic nature of knowledge transfer and dynamic strategies, exploring R&D effort strategies in UIC. Further, we apply a Stackelberg differential game to portray the knowledge transfer process and investigate how product innovation affects UIC performance. The results indicate that in the scenario where the leadership positions of the two participants can be interchanged, stronger performance occurs in the case of university leadership. Equilibrium strategies that maximise the revenues always exist no matter who is the game leader, and revenues are U-shaped correlated with product innovativeness. Intriguingly, our research shows that enterprises' revenue-sharing ratios do not always lead to higher profits. Our study provides several insights for both universities and firms.