Universities contribute to innovation systems through scientific production, intellectual property protection, technology transfer, and academic–corporate collaboration. Innovation-related outputs depend on combinations of organizational, institutional, and research-related conditions rather than isolated variables. This article examines innovation-related performance in Brazilian federal universities using data from 69 institutions collected by the Brazilian Office of the Comptroller General. The study analyzes intellectual property assets, technology transfer rate, and patent-cited scholarly output through descriptive statistics, correlation analyses, and fuzzy-set Qualitative Comparative Analysis (fsQCA). The findings show that academic–corporate collaboration is the most consistent condition associated with stronger innovation-related performance. Internal regulation enables intellectual property generation and technology transfer, while field-weighted citation impact is particularly relevant for patent-cited scholarly output. Institutional age is not a linear predictor of innovation-related performance, as younger universities appear prominently in normalized indicators. The article provides configurational evidence from a public higher education system in an emerging economy.
