Elsevier

Technovation

Volume 24, Issue 7, July 2004, Pages 517-528
Technovation

International partnerships for knowledge in business and academia: A comparison between Europe and the USA

https://doi.org/10.1016/S0166-4972(03)00141-XGet rights and content

Abstract

Inter-firm strategic technology collaborations are more and more frequently used as a source of knowledge. American corporations do not just collaborate among themselves, but they have proven to be very attractive partners also for European Corporations. However, technological co-operation among European firms strongly declined in the 1990s, not only in relative terms, but also in absolute terms. We compare these trends with what has happened in academic collaborations measured by scientific co-authored papers. In this domain, Europeans are more and more likely to collaborate among each other, and they are also becoming more attractive for American scientists.

Since one of the core objectives of the European Union science and technology policy has been to foster collaboration, we can deduct that this has been a success in the field of academia, but a failure in the business field. A few tentative explanations and policy implications are addressed.

Section snippets

Collaborating for knowledge: a positive sum game

International collaborations are a significant and increasingly important channel of diffusion of knowledge in both the public and the business sectors. Their importance has grown, as the number of partnerships among public research centres, universities and firms testify (National Science Foundation, 2002). Collaboration for knowledge has received a widespread consensus from analysts. It has been stressed that collaboration allows increasing the number of agents able to benefit from knowledge,

Strategic technology agreements

A strategic industrial technology agreement is defined as a partnership that has the following three characteristics: (1) it involves a two-way relationship where knowledge is a crucial component; (2) it is contractual in nature with no or little equity involvement by the participants; (3) it is strategic in the sense that it is a long-term planned activity (Mowery, 1992, Mytelka, 2001). We do not assume that collaboration among companies to share know-how should necessarily be satisfactory (in

Academic collaborations

Partnerships and collaborations promoted by public research institutions and universities equally play a crucial role in the international dissemination of knowledge. The scope, complexity and cost of some scientific problems suggest and often compel international collaborations among institutions of different countries. They can take a variety of forms: joint research centers, exchange of students and of academic staff, sharing of scientific information. One of the ways to measure these

Conclusions

This paper has commented on a significant divergent trend in international collaborations for knowledge. On one hand, American companies have considerably increased the recourse to strategic technology agreements as a source to innovate and this has also affected European firms, which have become more willing to collaborate with American partners, and less interested in sharing know-how with other European companies. European firms have looked for partnerships in those countries where they

Acknowledgements

This research has been carried out within the Network on ‘The Relationship between Technological Strategies of Multinational Companies and the National Systems of Innovation. Consequences for National and European S&T Policies’ (MESIAS Network), funded within the STRATA Programme of the European Commission, Directorate-General Science (Contract HPV1-CT-1999-0003). We wish to thank the coordinator of the Project, José Molero, for intellectual leadership, Isabel Alvarez for making the project

Daniele Archibugi is a Technological Director at the Italian National Research Council. He has graduated in Economics at the University of Rome and taken his PhD at the University of Sussex. He has worked and taught at the Universities of Sussex, Naples, Cambridge and Rome. He is currently Leverhulme Visiting Professor at the London School of Economics and Political Science. He is an adviser to the European Union, the OECD, several UN agencies and various national governments.

He is the author

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    Daniele Archibugi is a Technological Director at the Italian National Research Council. He has graduated in Economics at the University of Rome and taken his PhD at the University of Sussex. He has worked and taught at the Universities of Sussex, Naples, Cambridge and Rome. He is currently Leverhulme Visiting Professor at the London School of Economics and Political Science. He is an adviser to the European Union, the OECD, several UN agencies and various national governments.

    He is the author of several books and articles on the economics and policy of technological change and international economics. Among his recent books, he has co-edited The Globalising Learning Economy (Oxford University Press, 2001), Innovation Policy in a Global Economy (Cambridge University Press, 1999), Trade, Growth and Technical Change (Cambridge University Press, 1998), Technology, Globalisation and Economic Performance (Cambridge University Press, 1997).

    Alberto Coco graduated in Economics at ‘La Sapienza’ University in Rome. He received a Master in Economics at Bocconi University in Milan and he is studying for a PhD in Economic Sciences at the Universitè Catholique de Louvain la Neuve.

    He worked for 2 years at Telecom Italia in the field of international innovative services. Since 2000 he has collaborated with the Italian National Research Council in the field of economics of technical change. He is currently working at the Bank of Italy. Among other things, he has co-authored, with Daniele Archibugi, a paper on the measurement of technological change in developed and developing countries.

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