Abstract:

Universities are active actors in the regional innovation system, along with other actors involved in creating an innovative ecosystem. They cooperate with different institutions, businesses, companies etc. in the field of education, research and technology transfer, and also with the city or region in which they are located and with the external environment. The University acts as an educational and research institution, an intermediary institution for the transfer of knowledge and technology in industry, and also as a producer of a skilled workforce. An important factor reflecting the fulfilment of the university's tasks in the regional innovation system is the implementation of contract research. Investigating the relationship between contractual research and innovative business activities seems to be appropriate for assessing the impact of university cooperation with the business sector on innovation activities in the region. The contribution presented the results of the dependence investigation between the revenues of universities from contractual research and selected indicators in innovative enterprises in Slovakia. Given the results of the correlation and regression analysis, contractual research can be considered as a key component of the regional innovation system. Contractual research has the greatest effect on the revenues of large enterprises with only technological innovation, and contract research has the greatest impact on the expenditure of medium-sized enterprises on technology innovation.

Keywords:

University, contractual research, regional innovation system, technology transfer, industry.