Abstract
Inter-firms R&D collaborations are often seen as an effective mean to access new resources, to innovate and/or to enter new markets in a turbulent environment characterized by fierce competition. However, all R&D partnerships do not have the same strategic importance. We analyze the strategic features of two types of partnerships that are seldom compared in the academic literature on R&D alliances: EU-sponsored inter-firms collaborations on the one hand, and non-sponsored, spontaneous inter-firm collaborations on the other. We compare their incentives and coordination mechanisms, and derive theoretical propositions that we test empirically. Our econometric analysis uses original data on (sponsored and non-sponsored) projects conducted by participants in the 5th and 6th European R&D Framework Programs. Our empirical findings support our main propositions. EU-funded collaborations are more exploratory and more focused on peripheral competences than spontaneous R&D collaborations. They are also less flexible, due to rigid monitoring rules which are nevertheless crucial to the projects’ success. However, there is no major difference between the different types of EU-sponsored collaborations, which pleads for a simplification of these policy instruments.
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Notes
See for instance the special issue on FP of Science and Public Policy, 2005, vol. 32, no. 5.
We acknowledge the existence of other motivations such as: (1) the search for power and/or hidden domination of a rival (a somewhat extreme case of "opportunism with guile"), and (2) the acquisition of reputation and other “network” assets. However, both can be considered as second-order motives.
For a similar argument on the effects of the lack of confidentiality of EU sponsored projects, see Luukkonen (2002).
For a more general discussion about the role of government agency in discouraging opportunistic behaviour in collaborative R&D, see Tripsas et al. (1995).
We estimated a variant of the model with a firm-specific random effect u j added to the x ijk vector. This random effect was never significant, thus reducing the random-effect model back to the simpler Model (1).
We also implemented a model using indicators of innovation activity instead of the indicators of innovation protection. This alternative model yielded essentially the same results and will not be mentioned hereafter, but full tables of results for this model remain available upon request from the authors.
“Specification” refers here to the vector of explanatory variables we use, and not to the functional form of the econometric model. Each specification thus corresponds to a different vector of explanatory variables.
The complete list of purposes (with information on their relative importance in the firm sample) is available upon request from the authors.
Again, the complete lists are available upon request from the authors.
It certainly did not occur by chance, and neither can it be attributed to the selection of some projects rather than others in the complementary component of the survey, since this selection was actually random.
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Matt, M., Robin, S. & Wolff, S. The influence of public programs on inter-firm R&D collaboration strategies: project-level evidence from EU FP5 and FP6. J Technol Transf 37, 885–916 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10961-011-9232-9
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10961-011-9232-9