| Firm-university relationships tend to develop when universities are considered as sources of technological innovation or sources of R&D assistance to innovative activities taking place in industry. These relationship have tended to be examined from a public policy perspective with the aim of understanding the motivations driving them and understanding how to improve the mechanisms involved in the transfer of technology.; Little is known, however, about the firm's perspective on the adoption of new university technology for product innovation. This research addresses this gap by examining the strategic contribution made by new university technologies to firms' product innovation. Building on strategic management and innovation theory, this work evaluates the degree of association between the new technology and a firm's core competencies. A new construct, core competence association, is defined and measures developed to evaluate the degree to which new university technology is associated with a firm's core competencies. In addition, platform product orientation, future market orientation, tacitness of technological knowledge and technology lifecycle stage have been measured. Using a survey instrument, data have been collected for 65 examples of product innovation within the information and communications technology sector.; The results indicate that firms are two times more likely to adopt new university technology that is closely associated with their core competencies than technology that is not. It is also found that the degree of association with core competencies is positively related to platform product and future market orientations, tacitness of knowledge and infancy in the technology lifecycle stage. By establishing empirical linkages between core competencies and product innovation, the research provides fresh support for the resource-based view of the firm. It also contributes to public policy by highlighting the efficacy of new university technology in platform product innovation and in building core competencies. |
