Pain shared, pain halved? Cooperation as a coping strategy for innovation barriers

The paper analyses the relationship between the perception of barriers to innovation and the firm’s propensity to cooperate to mitigate their effect. First, we look at whether cooperation with research organizations or private firms is associated with experiencing different types of barriers, for example, financial constraints, lack of human capital or uncertain market demand. Second, we test whether experiencing several types of barriers simultaneously has a super-modular effect on the propensity to cooperate tout court, and the choice of cooperation partner. We find that having to face a single, specific constraint leads to firms ‘sharing the pain’ with cooperation partners—both research organization and other firms. However, the results of a super-modularity test show that having to cope with different barriers is a deterrent to establishing cooperation agreements, especially when firms lack finance, adequate skills and information on technology or markets. The paper adds to the innovation literature by identifying the factors associated with firms’ coping with different barriers by applying a selective cooperation strategy

Biophysical and biochemical study of the plasma membrane of pig adipose cell

International audienc

Cooperation or competition in R&D when innovation and absorption are costly

This article analyzes cost-reducing R&D investments by firms that behave non-cooperatively or cooperatively. Firms face a trade-off between allocating their R&D investments to innovate or to imitate (absorb). We find that the non-cooperative behavior not only induces more imitation (absorption) but also, for the most part, more innovation investments. Only the cooperative behavior, however, ensures that R&D investments are allocated efficiently to innovation and to imitation (absorption) in the sense that any given amount of industry-wide cost reduction is obtained for the minimum overall R&D costs.Absorptive capacity, Cooperation, Spillovers, Innovation, Imitation, R&D,