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The effect of competitive and non-competitive R&D collaboration on firm innovation

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Abstract

A firm can improve its innovation either by its internal research and development (R&D) efforts or by forming external collaborative R&D alliances. While previous studies on R&D collaboration and knowledge diffusion mainly focus on various external sources of R&D collaboration, little effort has been made to investigate the joint impact of competitive and non-competitive R&D collaborations on firm innovation simultaneously. By examining the data of 165 Taiwanese firms in the information and communication technology industry, we find that: (1) non-competitive R&D collaborations with universities have a positive direct impact on firm’s innovation performance; and (2) both non-competitive and competitive R&D collaborations have a positively moderating effect on the relationship between a firm’s internal R&D efforts and firm innovation and the positive moderating effect is higher for non-competitive R&D collaborations than that of competitive R&D collaborations. These findings suggest that R&D collaborations, either non-competitive or competitive, exhibit the nature of a win–win situation. We also derive implications for firms’ selection of R&D alliance partners and government policies.

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Notes

  1. Since IRD has high correlations (above 0.8) with the interaction terms (i.e., IRD × UC, IRD × RIC, and IRD × IFC), in order to deal with the possible multicollinearity problem between interaction terms and independent variables, we re-examined the negative binomial regression models for each type of R&D collaboration and its interaction term separately.

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  1. Department of Business Administration, National Chengchi University, 64, Sec.2, Zhi-Nan Road, Taipei, 116, Taiwan, ROC

    Kuo-Feng Huang & Chwo-Ming Joseph Yu

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  1. Kuo-Feng Huang
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Correspondence to Kuo-Feng Huang.

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Huang, KF., Yu, CM.J. The effect of competitive and non-competitive R&D collaboration on firm innovation. J Technol Transf 36, 383–403 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10961-010-9155-x

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