Luca Pennacchio

Le determinanti della cooperazione nei distretti tecnologici italiani finanziati dal governo

This paper aims to identify the factors that result in cooperation in R&D in high-tech industrial sectors. Our research focused on Italian technological districts created under a specific public policy to promote innovation and regional economic development. The most interesting results concern the effect of the structural characteristics of the individual districts upon collaboration choices: the probability of cooperating is higher in districts in which universities and public research centres have a major weight and in districts with governance more geared to market logic. Network effects, captured with key indicators typical of social network analysis, also play an important role in causing the propensity to cooperate. Our findings confirm the importance of factors identified by the traditional’literature and which may be chiefly ascribed to the transfer and absorption of knowledge. However, the latter would appear to have less impact on collaboration strategies than specific district factors and network effects.

The Role of R&D Cooperation in Firm Innovation

The present paper investigates the role of research and development (R&D) cooperation in firm innovation. In particular, we evaluate the direct impact of cooperation on firm innovation and its moderating effect on the relationship between internal R&D and innovation. The empirical analysis is based on a large sample of Italian firms drawn from the Sixth Community Innovation Survey. We estimate a multivariate probit model which takes into account the complementarity of different types of innovation and the heterogeneity in the choice of cooperation partners. The estimation results indicate a strong and positive effect of non-competitive collaborations with suppliers, clients and private research institutes on the different types of firm innovation. Collaborations with universities enhance organizational innovations but have weak effects on the other types of innovations. Also cooperation with competitors positively affects firms’ innovations, especially in the case of organizational innovations. On the other hand, moderating effects are scant and restricted to some forms of non-competitive cooperation.

Cooperazione in ricerca e sviluppo e attività innovativa delle imprese: un’analisi empirica della realtà italiana

In recent decades firms have stepped up cooperation in R&D to improve their innovation capability by exploiting the external knowledge. Using data from the Community Innovation Survey, this paper analyzes the effect of cooperation on the propensity to innovate of Italian firms. Overall, the main results show that cooperation in research and development has a positive effect on this propensity. However, the effect varies according to the type of partner chosen by the firm. The greatest benefits derive from collaborations with non-competitive partners, such as suppliers and clients, but cooperation with competitors may also stimulate the firms’ innovation capabilities. Instead, cooperation with universities and other public research organizations shows a weak positive correlation with innovation propensity of firms. Size, R&D intensity, public support and internationalization also play an important role. The work takes into account the simultaneity and heterogeneity in firms’ innovation and collaboration strategies.