We analyze the determinants of firm-based inventors’ collaborations with universities abroad, comparing them with collaborations with national universities. We propose a micro-founded theoretical framework that introduces the role of personal linkages and global organizational pipelines as drivers of international academic collaborations, and we empirically investigate collaborations with national and international universities in a sample of inventors in Italy. We find that in general international collaborations depend positively on inventors working for multinational enterprises (MNEs). Instead for collaborations with national universities, the personal local linkages of the inventors play a large role. However, we also find that for collaborations with very distant universities abroad, such as US ones, working for an MNE is less crucial and the personal linkages of inventors become more important. In this case being an inventor with a network of foreign colleagues and with greater acquaintance with the norms of open science facilitates the interaction. This applies also to inventors who work for MNEs. The results point to a hybrid model of global linkages in the case of collaborations between firms and universities, in which both the personal international linkages of the inventors and the global organizational pipelines of MNEs play an important role.

我们分析了基于公司的发明家与国外大学合作的决定因素，并将它们与与国立大学的合作进行了比较。我们提出了一个微观基础的理论框架，该框架将个人联系和全球组织渠道作为国际学术合作的驱动因素引入了作用，并且我们在意大利的发明家样本中实证调查了与国内和国际大学的合作。我们发现，一般而言，国际合作积极依赖于为跨国企业 (MNE) 工作的发明家。相反，对于与国立大学的合作，发明人在当地的个人联系发挥了重要作用。然而，我们也发现，对于与非常遥远的合作国外的大学，例如美国的大学，为跨国公司工作就不那么重要了，发明人的个人联系变得更加重要。在这种情况下，作为一个拥有外国同事网络的发明家，并且对开放科学的规范有更多的了解，可以促进互动。这也适用于为跨国公司工作的发明人。结果表明，在公司与大学合作的情况下，全球联系的混合模型，其中发明人的个人国际联系和跨国公司的全球组织渠道都发挥了重要作用。