Industry PhD Schemes: Developing Innovation Competencies in Firms? Taran Thune & Pål Børing Received: 1 October 2013 /Accepted: 16 June 2014 # Springer Science+Business Media New York 2014 Abstract The paper addresses the question of how firms develop innovation- related competencies, by looking at innovative firms and their partnerships with universities. We argue that university partnerships are a strategy taken by innova- tive firms to develop technological competencies and innovation capacity, rather than an approach to source externally developed knowledge. Based on resource dependence theory, we argue that firms of different sizes and investment in R&D have different competence needs, this likely influences the extent to which they collaborate with universities. To investigate this, we carried out a mixed methods study of firms that collaborate with universities to develop innovation competen- cies by participating in Industry-PhD projects. The analyses show inconsistent results. The qualitative study indicated that small and large firms behave different along the patterns expected. However, analyses based on a survey of firms found that the firms where more similar in their approach to university partnerships than expected; and that development of broader competencies, knowledge in core technological areas, R&D competencies and innovation capability were key results in all firms. Keywords Innovation . Firms . Competencies . Industry PhD Introduction This paper addresses the role of university-industry partnerships in developing innovation competencies in firms. Recent research and policy have emphasised university-industry collaboration as a way to develop and exchange competencies in universities and in firms, rather than seeing university-industry partnerships J Knowl Econ DOI 10.1007/s13132-014-0214-7 T. Thune (*) Centre of Technology, Innovation and Culture, University of Oslo, Oslo, Norway e-mail: taranmt@tik.uio.no P. Børing Nordic Institute for Studies of Innovation, Research and Education (NIFU), Oslo, Norway