The Anchor Tenant Hypothesis: Exploring the Role of Large, Local, R&D-Intensive Firms in Regional Innovation Systems

Abstract

We examine the geographic co-location of university research and industrial R&D in three technology areas. While we find strong evidence of co-location of these vertically connected activities, regional economies appear to vary markedly in their ability to convert local academic research into local commercial innovation. We develop and test the hypothesis that the presence of a large, local, R&D-intensive firm—an anchor tenant—enhances the regional innovation system such that local university research is more likely to be absorbed by and to stimulate local industrial R&D.