Cooperation and Innovation Choices and Constraints for Low and High Tech Industry Firms Engaging in Joint Research and Development Programs.

Abstract

One of the most relevant purposes a firm has is to maintain its position on the market in ones domain. In this process being innovative and technologically ahead of the competition plays a big role. However, due to the strong technological development in the past forty years, competition has been growing between organizations. For this reason nowadays there is an increasingly amount of organizations which decide to join a Research & Development partnership. At first sight it seems tempting for organizations to join a R&D partnership with similar organizations, due to the same technology that is applied in the production processes and the amount of information available for exchange. However there are more factors which have to be taken into account for a firm making the decision to join a R&D partnership. This research looks for the underlying patterns in R&D partnerships worldwide in the period from 1990 up until 2000 and provides predictive statistics for partner selection based on the nationality and the sector of operation of firms.