Collaboration and innovation outputs

The role of collaboration in the creation and diffusion of innovations has received a considerable amount of interest in the past decade from both innovation economists and European policy makers. The European Commission (EC), for example, requires collaboration for research funded under the Framework Programmes (FPs) and encourages national policies to increase the rate of collaboration between firms and between firms and public research organizations (PROs) such as universities and publicly-funded research institutes (Hagedoorn et ai. 2000). Part of the increased attention given to collaboration is due to a shift in economic theories of innovation from a linear to an interactive model and to a recognition of the importance of tacit knowledge to innovation and technology transfer. The first shift places greater importance on information and knowledge flows. This is partly because there are more linkages within an interactive or chain-link innovation system and partly because modern innovation theories stress the diffusion of knowledge among many different actors (Kline and Rosenberg 1986; Rothwell 1992; Freeman 1987; Nelson 1993; Lundvall 1992; Edquist 1997; Asheim and Smith 1999; Lundvall et al. 2002). Within this framework, the literature has focused on two types of linkages: inter-firm relationships, such as networks of user-producers or competing firms (von Hippel 1988; Lundvall 1991, 1992), and linkages between firms and PROs (Mansfield and Lee 1996; Pavitt 1991). Although many of these linkages do not require collaboration, many researchers have argued that collaboration plays a central role in the flow of knowledge among different actors.