Antonioli, Davide, Marzucchi, Alberto and Savona, Maria (2017) Pain shared, pain halved? Cooperation as a coping strategy for innovation barriers. Journal of Technology Transfer, 42 (4). pp. 841-64. ISSN 0892-9912

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Abstract

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.

Item Type:	Article
Keywords:	Barriers to innovation, Innovation cooperation, Super- and sub-modularity, Firm behaviour, Innovation policy
Schools and Departments:	School of Business, Management and Economics > SPRU - Science Policy Research Unit
Depositing User:	Helen Webb - Library
Date Deposited:	07 Feb 2017 10:19
Last Modified:	02 Jul 2019 18:45
URI:	http://sro.sussex.ac.uk/id/eprint/66649

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