The progression of collaborative technology projects in an innovation ecosystem – The Case of Nuevo León

Abstract

Collaboration between industry and universities, and research centers has proven to be very effective for developing innovations at the regional level. This study determines how much the innovation and technological projects between the industry in Nuevo León and the technology extension services are progressing once they decide to collaborate. This study tries to determine how collaborative technology projects are progressing in Nuevo León; this will determine how they are progressing and measure their effectiveness. For this matter, we asked the companies in the region, through the regional clusters, with whom they collaborate and the results of these collaborations. We sent a questionnaire (link to google documents) asking if they have collaborated with one or more R&D centers, how many times each, and their project´s Technology Readiness Level (TRL) at the beginning of the collaboration and the ending TRL. The questionnaire results showed that 67% of the reported collaboration projects showed some advance, and from that, the ones that showed an advance, 34% (the higher), increased their TRL in 2 levels. The responses for the questionnaire showed that the majority of the collaboration’s progress at least two TRL levels, and there were identified projects in all different stages of the TRL except for level 9, meaning that the region offers the capabilities to take the technological projects to the following TRL levels.