Dear Colleagues,
we are pleased to share the second issue of Industry & Innovation for 2026. It features a variety of micro-level innovation studies, including university–industry collaboration as a channel for graduate recruitment and capability building, the role of entrepreneurs' international experience in shaping start-ups' foreign market choices, the impact of employee ethnic diversity on product and process innovation, and the dynamic downsides of co-author success in scientific collaboration networks.
We hope you enjoy the reading:
Research articles
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/13662716.2025.2482040
Click to follow link." target="_blank" rel="noopener">Graduate hiring as a human capital outcome of university-industry innovation collaboration
https://www.tandfonline.com/author/Evers%2C+Gerwin
Click to follow link." target="_blank" rel="noopener">Gerwin Evers & Christian Richter Østergaard
Abstract
Firms can strengthen their competitive position in the knowledge-based economy by collaborating with universities on innovation. Beyond generating knowledge, such collaborations can also offer a strategic approach for firms to access and recruit highly skilled talent, particularly university graduates. This study explores the impact of university-industry innovation collaborations on firms' hiring of university graduates. Using genetic matching – a robust, algorithm-driven matching method that optimises covariate balance – on data from the Danish Community Innovation Survey and longitudinal firm-level employment microdata, the study constructs a counterfactual to assess how university collaborations influence the hiring of high-skilled labour. The results show that firms involved in university-industry collaborations increase their recruitment of graduates, particularly those from their university partners and among PhD graduates. These findings highlight that collaborating with a university not only supports knowledge transfer but also reshapes firms' workforce composition, supports building absorptive capacity and fostering long-term innovation capabilities.
Go and conquer the world? Entrepreneurs' international experience and the target of different types of foreign markets
Stefano Elia & Luca Grilli
Abstract
Building on the well-established stylised fact that entrepreneurs' international experience is a key driver of start-ups' internationalisation, we draw on the competence-based view of the firm to theorise that the type of international experience, i.e. work vs. education, and its length, long term vs. short term, influence the target market of the international opportunities pursued, i.e. Business to Consumer (B2C) vs. Business to Organisation (B2O) markets. We test our theoretical framework on 1,034 young innovative companies created in Italy and show that entrepreneurs' international education and long-term experience have a greater positive impact on the likelihood of targeting foreign B2C customers than foreign B2O customers. Furthermore, international work experience similarly affects the likelihood of targeting both types of foreign customers. Our findings provide a more nuanced understanding of how entrepreneurs' international human capital-enhancing activities, stemming from different personal experiences, influence the internationalisation dynamics of their innovative start-ups.
Does employee's diversity help innovation?: Evidence from Canadian firms
Mahdiyeh Entezarkheir & Saeed Moshiri
Abstract
Labour is commonly perceived as a uniform input within the literature on knowledge production. Nevertheless, the ethnic diversity of employees can also exert an influence on knowledge generation. Organisational behaviour (OB) theories have identified decision-making and social categorisation as two fundamental processes that can shape the effects of diversity on innovation. Ethnically diverse employees may contribute to innovation through their distinct ideas rooted in their diverse cultural backgrounds. Conversely, they might impede innovation due to potential conflicts in behaviour. In this research, we explore the impact of ethnic diversity among employees on both product and process innovations, using data from the Canadian Workplace and Employee Surveys (WES). Our mixed logit model estimation outcomes substantiate the positive contribution of ethnic diversity on innovation, even after controlling for employee and firm characteristics. These results remain robust when we account for potential endogeneity issues. Furthermore, our findings suggest that ethnically diverse employees are particularly effective in fostering innovation within firms that possess substantial organisational capital and offer comprehensive training programmes. Across various industries, it appears that manufacturing, transportation, and select service sectors have reaped the greatest benefits from ethnic diversity to innovation.
The downside of co-author success in scientific collaborations
K. V. Andersen, M. L. Mors & J. Jeppesen
Abstract
Research on scientific collaboration networks demonstrates that co-authorship enhances scientists' performance, particularly when co-authors are prominent within the network. Yet, prior work largely adopts a static perspective, leaving limited understanding of how changes in co-authors' prominence affect scientists. When co-authors engage in other research projects, this affects their network prominence and can influence scientists' performance. Drawing on social network theory and research on scientific collaboration, we theorise that increases in co-authors' prominence are associated with reduced performance for the focal scientist. We argue that when co-authors increase in prominence, they disperse their effort across projects, allocating less to the joint endeavour. The hypotheses are tested using unique data on 12,023 observations of 1,553 scientists collaborating on 4,433 papers. The results reveal a negative spillover: focal scientists' performance declines when co-authors rise in prominence. This effect intensifies when collaborators also increase in performance but diminishes with greater knowledge domain overlap.
Best regards
Alessandra Perri and Vera Rocha
Co-Editors-in-Chief, Industry and Innovation
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Vera Rocha
Copenhagen Business School
Kilevej
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