Does absorptive capacity determine collaboration returns to innovation? A geographical dimension

Abstract

This paper aims to estimate the impact of collaboration in innovation activities with partners in different geographical areas on innovative performance. By using the Spanish Technological Innovation Panel, this study provides evidence that the benefits of collaboration differ across different dimensions of the geography. We find that the impact of extra-European cooperation on innovation performance is larger than that of national and European cooperation, indicating that firms tend to benefit more from interaction with international collaborators as a way to access new technologies or specialized and novel knowledge that they are unable to find locally. We also find evidence of the positive role played by absorptive capacity, concluding that it implies a higher premium on the innovation returns to cooperation in the international case and mainly in the European one.

Exploration during turbulent times: an analysis of the relation between cooperation in innovation activities and radical innovation performance during the economic crisis

“…Table 6 shows the estimations for the whole period with both the unbalanced (model 6) and the balanced panels (model 7), and for the latter in the pre-crisis (model 8) and the during-crisis years (model 9). In line with previous studies (Badillo & Moreno 2015), both national only and international are positive and significant at p < 0.01 in the whole-period models.…”

“…Cooperation may vary a lot in terms of purposes, duration and types of partners. In particular, existing studies have taken into account the geographical location of partners (Badillo & Moreno 2015;van Beers & Zand 2014;Nieto & Santamaría 2007), the type of cooperating partners (Belderbos et al 2004;Duysters & Lokshin 2011), and the time-dimension of collaboration (Belderbos et al 2015;Nieto & Santamaría 2007).…”

“…In contrast to national cooperation in innovation, international partners offer new learning opportunities not or scarcely available nationally, which eventually boost innovation performance (Arvanitis & Bolli 2013;Badillo & Moreno 2015;van Beers & Zand 2014;Berchicci et al 2015;Frenz & Ietto-Gillies 2009;Lavie & Miller 2008).…”

Innovative potential for development of Europe’s neighbouring countries and regions

“…Policy options were grouped into two alternative sets of measures, which became the bases of two alternative scenarios of regional economic development: the Conservative scenario and the Technology and innovation-based development scenario. Results from the model suggest that a persistent and systematic long-term regional technology development-based economic policy that applies measures such as investment (Crescenzi and Petrakos 2016), education Matano and Ramos (2016), R&D support Badillo and Moreno (2016), and increased physical accessibility to developed markets could in the longer run result in higher levels of regional and national production together with fewer interregional differences than a scenario that would support the expansion of traditional industries in the region.…”

“…The article by Badillo and Moreno (2016) estimates the impact of collaboration in innovation activities with partners in different geographical areas on innovative performance. By using the Spanish Technological Innovation Panel, this study provides evidence that the benefits of collaboration differ across different dimensions of geography.…”