When do firm-technology intermediary interactions result in cognitive capacity additionality

Governments have increasingly become involved in stimulating cooperation for innovation and R&D and have less focused on direct R&D subsidies. One set of initiatives is targeted at providing financial support for technology intermediaries. In this paper, we shed light on when technology intermediaries contribute to learning or networking outcomes generated by the firms that call upon them. We hereby focus on network and competence additionality as measures for cognitive capacity additionality and study the impact of collective research centres on their member firms. The results indicate that absorptive capacity of the collective research centre does not affect cognitive capacity additionality generated by the member firms for R&D activities, but higher levels of absorptive capacity tend to negatively affect cognitive capacity additionality generated by member firms engaging in R&D related activities. The absorptive capacity of the member firms does not directly affect cognitive capacity additionality generated by the member firms, but the results on mediation analysis show that member firms with higher levels of absorptive capacity use the services of the collective research centre more intensively, and generate higher levels of cognitive capacity additionality.