Networks, Innovation and Knowledge Transfer in Tourism Industry: An Empirical Study of SMEs in Portugal

• Autor(a) principal: Lopes, João M.
• Data de Publicação: 2021
• Outros Autores: Oliveira, Márcio, Lopes, Jorge, Zaman, Umer
• Tipo de documento: Artigo
• Idioma: eng
• Título da fonte: Repositório Científico de Acesso Aberto de Portugal (Repositórios Cientìficos)
• Texto Completo: http://hdl.handle.net/10400.8/5750
• topic: Tourism; Regional development networks; Tourism SMEs; Triple Helix; Commercialisation and Knowledge Transfer

The present study aims at investigating how the commercialisation and knowledge transfer be-tween the SMEs of the tourism sector and the higher education institutions (HEIs) are made, as well as to check if the SMEs of the tourism sector are part of the tourism networks, and what their mo-tivations are. We used a qualitative methodology, applying the triangulation method to eight SMEs and one HEI. The results indicate that the commercialisation and knowledge transfer between the SMEs and the HEIs are not effective. SMEs are part of regional networks of business innovation; however, they don’t participate in R&D activities with HEIs. Some suggestions were made to SMEs, HEIs, and regional governments to speed up commercialisation and knowledge transfer in the tourism sector. We adapted the Triple Helix Model to the tourism sector, thus creating the “Triple Helix in the Tourism Context”. Only a few studies have researched the knowledge commercialisa-tion in the tourism sector, a gap that this article aims to compensate.