Date & Time: 13:00-14:30 Friday 6 February 2026
Style: Hybrid (In-person & Zooom Online)
Venue: Engineering Bldg 3, TMI Meeting room/Lounge Lecture room
Please make a registration from the Form link below:
https://forms.gle/NPfZno3MCcAPxhfv5
Speaker:
Prof. Federico Caviggioli (Associate professor, Department of Management and Production Engineering (DIGEP), Politecnico di Torino)
Overview:
Universities are often portrayed as ‘anchor tenants’ of local innovation, but when, how, and in which technologies do they actually reshape regional specialisation? This seminar synthesises evidence from three large scale, patent based studies on Europe (and Italy in depth) to unpack the mechanisms behind university–industry co evolution and the policy levers that can amplify it in real economies. First, we map four distinct co evolution regimes (convergent vs. divergent trajectories, and university push vs. region pull dynamics) using NUTS3 patent portfolios for 428 universities and their co located firms. We show substantial regional heterogeneity: convergence is more likely around large, STEM oriented universities, while region pull dominates where private R&D capability is already strong. Second, moving to the technology level, we test whether university ‘entry’ into a new patent field predicts subsequent regional specialisation in that same field. University entry robustly raises specialisation, but the effect collapses when academia and local industry are technologically distant, highlighting proximity and absorptive capacity as decisive moderators. The premium is strongest in high performing innovation ecosystems. Third, we zoom into Italy and show that accumulated university patent stocks causally increase local industrial specialisation, with smaller yet significant spillovers from neighbouring provinces. Effects are particularly pronounced in Southern areas and attenuated for highly internationalised universities, suggesting a trade off between global reach and local anchoring.
Speaker’s BIO:
Federico Caviggioli is Associate Professor at the Department of Management and Production Engineering (DIGEP) at Politecnico di Torino, Italy. He holds a Ph.D. in Economics and Management of Technology from the University of Bergamo. His research focuses on the economics of innovation, technology transfer, patent data intelligence, and the gender gap in innovation. He has published in journals such as Research Policy, Technovation, Industry & Innovation, and Technological Forecasting and Social Change. He teaches Business Economics, Accounting, Data Engineering, and Technology Management to undergrad and PhD students. He is currently Vice Coordinator of the Faculty of Production and Management Engineering at Politecnico di Torino.
https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=OSs-ylQAAAAJ
Host: Nishino Laboratory, TMI-Technology Management for Innovation & STIG-Science, Technology, and Innovation Governance, UTokyo
Co-host: IFI-Institute for Future Initiatives, UTokyo
Inquiries: seminar(a)tmi.t.u-tokyo.ac.jp (Prof. Nariaki Nishino)
01.15.2026