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Cooperation in Innovative Efforts: a Systematic Literature Review

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Abstract

The importance of cooperation in innovation has been widely studied. Cooperative settings are potential platforms for the indirect and direct transmission of knowledge. This article aims to present the results of a systematic literature review on innovation cooperation. It covers topics such as the effects of cooperation according to different governance structures, cooperation drivers, partner’s attributes, firm size, regional factors, and the host country’s current stage of economic development. In general, cooperation is an organizational setting that determines knowledge sharing and diffusion. A significant part of the empirical evidence analyzed here reveals that cooperation has a positive effect on innovation performance. Such a positive correlation is highly likely to be found in case studies of technology-intensive sectors in small regions. However, large datasets, mainly from Europe and China, also yield positive results. Results may also vary according to firms’ attributes and the type of cooperation agreement adopted.

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Notes

  1. The exact keywords used were: innovation cooperation, innovation collaboration, joint-venture cooperation, joint-venture collaboration, R&D cooperation, R&D collaboration, joint-venture R&D, R&D, alliances, research cooperation, research cooperation innovation, research collaboration, research joint-venture, cooperation partners, cooperation partner selection, cooperation partners innovation, cooperation and competition, cooperation and competition innovation, cooperation and competition antitrust, who cooperates innovation.

  2. Except for ScienceDirect and JSTOR, searches on the other libraries were made through Capes Periódicos. This government-funded website grants access to several international bibliographical and journal bases signed by the Ministry of Education.

  3. For further reading on the subject, in addition to Shapiro (2011) and Baker (2007), see Pires-Alves et al. (2019).

  4. See Nagaoka et al. (2010), and Hall et al. (2010) for more details on how to measure innovation with patent data.

  5. For more information on appropriability regimes, see Malerba and Orsenigo (1997).

  6. Structural hole is a brokerage position between two other disconnected economic agents in a network (Sun & Lee 2013).

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The research was supported by Coordination for the Improvement of Higher Education Personnel — CAPES (001).

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  1. Department of Economics, Federal University of Juiz de Fora, Campus Universitário, São Pedro, 360036-900, Brazil

    João Augusto Ferreira Freire & Eduardo Gonçalves

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Freire, J.A.F., Gonçalves, E. Cooperation in Innovative Efforts: a Systematic Literature Review. J Knowl Econ 13, 3364–3400 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s13132-021-00837-3

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