The organisational and geographic diversity and innovation potential of EU-funded research networks

Abstract

Public funding of research improves the systemic conditions of entrepreneurial ecosystems. It provides early-stage financing to technologies that form the basis for new products and services. In addition to financial support, instruments as the EC Framework Programmes (FP) facilitate the creation of research networks. By bringing together organisations of various types and geographic origins and increasing the diversity of their interactions, the instrument seeks to accelerate a discovery process in which organisations attempt to bring desired innovations to the market and society. In this paper, we examine the impact of organisational and geographic diversity of partnerships in EU-funded research networks on the commercial potential of their innovations. We explore a sample of 603 collaborative research projects supported by European FPs. We use data from the Innovation Radar, a unique survey database developed by DG CONNECT to assess the innovation outcomes of FP projects in ICT. We show that innovations developed by research networks with a higher organisational diversity have more commercial potential. This finding supports the idea that policies improving systemic conditions of entrepreneurship ecosystems through the creation of institutionally diverse research networks can have beneficial effects on the commercialisation potential of innovations developed in FP projects. In contrast, research networks with a wider range of internationally dispersed research partners are likely to have less innovation potential. This may suggest the existence of coordination and communication difficulties in FP projects where geographic diversity is greater.

SME participation in research grant consortia—the emergence of coordinated attention in collaborative innovation

“…These constraints make them likely to favor collaborative innovation with immediate effects on sales and competitiveness (Audretsch & Keilbach, 2008;Baum et al, 2000). On the other hand, these priorities of SMEs for commercialization often times match the political objectives for the research grants, such as the European Union's FPs, envisioning rapid economic effects (Nepelski et al, 2019). This alignment of interests has tangible consequences.…”

Sustainability of Cluster Organizations as Open Innovation Intermediaries

“…It is widely accepted that innovations generated in networks with a greater organizational diversity have greater economic capacity [63]. In this paper, the notion of sustainable diversity is proposed.…”

“…On the other hand, more diverse networks might come across problems arising from dissimilarities in organizational capacities between stakeholders. Moreover, managerial issues might appear when different partners involved in cooperation partnerships seek to adjust their various goals and perspectives [63]. Additionally, companies might be cautious of involving themselves in cooperation projects for competitive reasons.…”

Evaluation of innovative technology market potential on the basis of technology audit

“…Preliminarily an enterprise obtains questionnaire on commercialization project (one questionnaire per one project) to be completed during three business days from the date of its receiving and sent back to experts. In our opinion, use of independent experts, as well as immediate expertise, is a positive side of this methodology, many researchers agree thereupon (Levie, 2012;Nagy, 2012;Nepelski et al, 2019;. But drawing a final conclusion only in minds of experts can bear significant risks, presence of which can cause essential financial losses and loss of property for enterprises.…”