The influence of shared R&D-project innovativeness perceptions on university-industry collaboration performance

The Journal of Technology Transfer - University-industry collaboration (UIC) partners’ different organizational backgrounds entail socialization with distinct thought worlds, management...     

R&D spillovers in a supply chain and productivity performance in British firms

The Journal of Technology Transfer - It is well known that there are incentives for cooperation and collaboration along the supply chain, as the performance of any one firm is dependent on that of...     

The R&D performance of the South African manufacturing sector, 1970–1993

In this article we undertake a detailed exploration of the research and development activities in one particular middle-income country. We explore what the data from R&D surveys can tell us about the levels, the determinants and the effectiveness of R&D in the manufacturing sector. We point to some of the broader factors that may have influenced South Africa’s drive to improve the technological capacity of its manufacturing sector, but we mostly focus on those issues associated directly with R&D. We show that the degree of interaction between the different domains of R&D activity, business, government and the tertiary sector has been weak, and that the possibility of positive spill-overs between these domains has not been fully exploited. In addition, little or no policy intervention designed to stimulate R&D activity by industry has been deployed in South Africa. We find that South African R&D activity has mainly been reactive in character and suggest that this lies at the heart of South Africa’s mixed R&D performance in relation to other developing countries.     

How organizations form R&D consortia

The research-and-development consortium is a promising means for pursuing development projects that are difficult to justify by the classical criterion of return on investment to the individual firm. New consortia are being formed in many generic and industrial technologies often with the encouragement and support of government. This paper outlines a seven-stage process by which new consortia are being formed and the six strategies that motivate firms to join consortia (pooling, acceleration, sharing, blocking, linking, and multi-path). Differences in the focus, means, and policy concerns of technology transfer are outlined for each stage and strategy.     

Social networks in R&D program evaluation

This paper introduces the social network methodology as a tool for evaluating important aspects of research and development (R&D) programs. It uses two detailed examples to illustrate the application of network concepts in program appraisal. By studying relationships, exchanges, network location and status, network structure and evolution, and participant characteristics and roles in the network, this approach provides a lens to important aspects of the longer-lasting, more sustainable contributions of public policy in affecting organisational capabilities to innovate. A key challenge currently is the integration of social network analysis with causal empirical models and more traditional economic approaches geared to assessing the outputs and impacts of R&D.     

Competition and R&D cooperation with universities and competitors

This paper analyses the relationship between competitive environment and R&D cooperation with universities and competitors. Our simple model suggests that cooperation creates benefits in terms of synergies but also induces costs due to spillovers. Since the value of these synergies and spillovers depends on the competitive pressure, cooperation propensity depends on the competitive environment. Differentiating between the dimensions of competition, we hypothesize that university cooperation corresponds to quality competition, while horizontal cooperation relates to price competition. Furthermore, we predict that a higher number of competitors reduces the incentives for horizontal cooperation as it diminishes the gains from “collusion”. We test these hypotheses using Swiss firm-level panel data that allows us to control for simultaneity of cooperation decisions and endogeneity of competition. Our empirical analysis supports the relevance of distinguishing between competition dimensions and cooperation partners, respectively. We find that price competition has an influence on university cooperation in the form of an inverted U. Quality competition only has an influence on university cooperation and the relationship shows a U-form. Moreover, we see that the number of principal competitors reduces cooperation between competitors.     

The relation between technology import and domestic R&D

The relation between domestic R&D and imports of technology is examined for 10 countries. Simple regressions revealed strong complementarity for each of the countries. Multiple regressions including GNP per capita and number of scientists and engineers were performed for the five countries with time series for all the variables. Strong complementarity was found between technology imports and domestic R&D and other variables for Japan and South Korea, weak for France, none for Germany and the US. Excluding government-financed R&D in the US resulted in a substitutive relation. Japan revealed a sharp decline in the ratio of technology payments to R&D spending; Korea is following in its steps. Complementarity appears to weaken in later stages as technology development strategies shift from dependent to imitative to autonomous or offensive technology development.     

Relative importance of external R&D: Trends and motivations

This paper reports the findings of our survey study of the methods firms use to generate new basic and applied research and development (R&D). By far, the most important source of new R&D are the firms' in-house programs. This finding holds for firms of all sizes. External R&D arrangements are most common for basic research, although most firms indicated that in the future they expect to increase their reliance on external sources for applied R&D. Small firms tend to acquire technology from the provider, whereas larger firms seem to utilize licensing agreements for gaining access to the results of R&D. Large firms may also be using more of a portfolio approach to external R&D in that they often use several different sources. They also appear to form their outside R&D ventures not only for traditional cost/risk-sharing reasons but also for strategic and competitive reasons. Their attempts to diversify their sources of technology are just as important as the traditional cost- and risk-sharing motivation. Finally, although some collaborative R&D ventures are in response to foreign competition, this appears to be of more concern to mid-sized firms than small or large ones.     

The impact of technology complexity on the financial performance of R&D projects: evidence from Singapore

The Journal of Technology Transfer - Prior empirical research is inconclusive in determining whether technology complexity influences the financial performance of research commercialization...     

Assessing the relationship between R&D subsidy,R&D cooperation and absorptive capacity: an investigation on the manufacturing Spanish case

Private companies want to eliminate outgoing spillovers while policymakers seek to maximize them. With subsidized R&D cooperation agreements both agents partially achieve their objectives. For this reason, in Europe, policymakers grant subsidies for R&D activities with the condition of establishing R&D cooperation agreements. This study explores the relationship of complementarity between R&D subsidy, R&D cooperation and absorptive capacity in the context of its contribution to labor productivity of enterprises. The data used comes from the Technological Innovation Panel (PITEC), managed by the Spanish National Statistics Institute. We selected manufacturing companies in the period 2008–2013. We evaluate the existence of complementarity through the systems approach and the interaction approach. The econometric technique that we used to estimate the coefficients of our empirical model was maximum-likelihood random effects. As a consequence of the low absorptive capacity of Spanish manufacturing firms we find that R&D subsidies and R&D cooperation agreements are not complementary variables, i.e., receiving public subsidies as a result of establishing R&D cooperation agreements has a lower impact on productivity than the sum of the individual impacts of R&D cooperation and R&D subsidies. In consequence, this result calls into question the convenience of using subsidized R&D cooperation agreements as a tool for promoting innovation in EU countries as there are notable differences between the companies in these countries in terms of absorption capacity.     

University R&D and Firm Productivity: Evidence from Italy

Ed Mansfield wrote several papers on the private returns to basic research (e.g. Mansfield, 1980) and the influence of academic research on industrial innovation (e.g. Mansfield, 1991). We extend this line of research by assessing the impact of university research on total factor productivity growth of Italian manufacturing firms. The econometric analysis is based on reduced-form estimation of the R&D capital stock model, including controls for two potential sources of sample selection bias, as proposed by Crepon et?al (1998) and Piga and Vivarelli (2004). Our results suggest that while there are positive returns to collaborative research with other firms, collaborative research with universities does not appear to directly stimulate productivity. We interpret this result as consistent with recent evidence (e.g. Hall et?al 2001, 2003) suggesting that firms engage in collaborative research with universities when appropriability conditions are weak.     

A study of technology-transfer mechanisms for federally funded R&D

The purpose of this study is to understand the relative effectiveness of various technology-transfer mechanisms used in transferring federally funded research and development projects. An analysis is carried out for 116 technology-transfer case studies based on survey data compiled through the US Department of Energy program offices. The results show that offering financial incentives and creating supportive advisory groups are highly successful ways to transfer technology.     

R&D consortia and technology transfer: Initial lessons from MCC

This paper discusses important aspects of technology transfer between MCC (the first R&D consortium to register under the National Cooperative Research Act of 1984) and company-based personnel. An evaluation of established technology-transfer models leads to a discussion of a parallel-processing approach and three important dimensions of the transfer process: mode, initiative, and continuity. Differences between R&D consortia and their member companies are categorized in terms of values and imperatives, networking, time pressure, the universalistic/particularistic nature of research activities, and different evaluation criteria. Generalized managerial implications are presented for R&D consortia.     

Industrial R&D Laboratories: Windows on Black Boxes?

This paper provides an overview of the survey-based literature on industrial Research and Development (R&D) laboratories, beginning with the work of Edwin Mansfield. Topics covered include R&D projects, new products, and new processes; the appropriability of intellectual property; the limits of the firm in R&D; and spillovers of knowledge from other firms and universities into the laboratories. I discuss the value of collecting information from industrial R&D managers, who participate in a wide range of R&D decisions and are the natural best source of information on these decisions. I also emphasize gaps in our knowledge concerning R&D from past studies, such as the private and social returns to R&D, the nature of firms' R&D portfolios, and other topics. The paper closes with a discussion of the benefits from building a national database on R&D laboratories that could be shared among researchers and that could take this area of research to a new and higher level of achievement.     

R&D Venture: proposition of a technology transfer concept for breakthrough technologies with R&D cooperation: A case study in the energy sector

At times when the market demands strong active innovation, large industrial corporations with established R&D organizations benefit from screening and developing breakthrough innovation. The ability of established organizations to absorb for future technologies is a key to successfully recognize, explore and capture breakthrough innovations. R&D Venturing is a practical way of bringing about technology transfer and exploration of future technologies through R&D cooperation, which is described in this paper by a multiple case study in the energy sector. Existing literature has been reviewed and an R&D Venturing concept will be suggested with a number of propositions for implementation. The results of the case study strongly support that different perspectives of the concept from industry, academia and the ventures themselves have to be carefully understood. Based on the results of the case study, a conceptual framework and propositions for a successful implementation have been derived. A critical discussion of the R&D Venturing concept shows the need for further empirical investigation.     

R&D spinoffs: Serendipity vs. a managed process

This paper describes some of the spinoff benefits that can result from R&D projects, and categorizes them in terms of the dimensions of market and technical newness. These dimensions are discussed with reference to two types of spinoffs: 1) alternative market applications, when the results of an R&D project are subsequently applied to a market or use that differs from the originally intended application, and 2) second-generation technologies, when the technology that was the subject of an R&D project is significantly altered or enhanced in unanticipated ways through subsequent R&D. Examples from the Department of Energy's Energy-Related Inventions Program are integrated into the results of literature review to illustrate key concepts, including core technologies, degrees of market and technology newness, technology robustness, and the nature of connections linking spinoffs to prior R&D investments. The paper concludes by discussing spinoffs as a managerial strategy.     

Knowledge exhaustibility public support to business R&D and the additionality constraint

The Journal of Technology Transfer - Recent advances of the economics of knowledge about the properties of knowledge as an economic good with the identification of the limited exhaustibility of...     

External R&D,product and process innovation in European manufacturing companies

The Journal of Technology Transfer - We assess the relationship between firms’ Research and Development expenditures over sales and innovation output, measured by three dummies indicating...     

University and inter-firm R&D collaborations: propensity and intensity of cooperation in Europe

This paper investigates the determinants of firms’ decision to cooperate in R&D with universities and the intensity of the cooperation effort, in relation to the engagement in inter-firm R&D collaborations. Using novel survey data for seven EU countries between 2007 and 2009, our analysis accounts for unobservable factors influencing R&D cooperation forms and addresses the main endogeneity issues. We find that internal knowledge, appropriability conditions and incoming spillovers explain a large variation of the probability and of the intensity of R&D collaborations of European firms with universities (and comparably with unaffiliated companies).