The formation and performance of university technological collaboration: A case of National Science and Technology Program for Telecommunication in Taiwan

University is considered as a critical actor to drive and to nurture a knowledge and technology network. In the open innovation trend, the formation of network and its performance get more attention by researchers. This paper explores how universities form a technological network and contribute to technological development. Addressing a social network analysis (SNA) perspective, this paper proposes that an organization´s technological capacity is highly related to its network position. The data analyzed in this paper includes 963 collaborative research plans from a telecommunication project sponsored by National Science Councils in Taiwan from 1998 to 2007. There are 88 nationwide educational departments participating in this project. Their publications and patents are accumulated as performance indicators. The measurement from SNA, degree centrality and betweenness, are taken as variables. Four of the findings are: first, the geographic effect on network formation is less. Next, an organization plays an intermediate in research collaboration would be likely to gain more funding. Then, an organization performs better while it takes active approach to collaboration. Last, the collaborative researches in universities are academic oriented. The gap of transformation publications into patents needs more attention to make up.