Sebastien Lechevalier (EHESS and Maison franco-japonaise) Yukio Ikeda (Graduate School of Social Sciences, Yokohama National University and Maison franco-japonaise) Junichi Nishimura (Graduate School of Economics, Hitotsubashi University and Maison franco-japonaise)
Abstract
The growing trend of collaborative R&D has been well documented recently, both at a global level and through national and industry case studies. However, there is no general agreement on its causes as well as on the motives of the firms collaborating in R&D with other players. The Japanese innovation system (JIS) is no exception. Furthermore, in this case, it is particularly important, because the JIS has been described since the 1970s as dominated by "in-house" R&D by large firms and this feature has been considered as one reason of the limits that the JIS reached at the end of the 1980s. By contrast to the existing literature on collaborative R&D in Japan, this paper focus on the case of the robot technology (RT), by using patent data applied in Japan between 1991 and 2004. The questions we address in this paper are as follows: Did the R&D collaboration in RT increase since the beginning of the 1990s? Did the R&D collaborations lead to higher quality of the outcomes? Is it possible to categorize different forms of collaborations and different types of players (depending on their degree of collaboration)? How to explain the evolution of R&D collaboration, if any? Our results are as follows. First, the level of R&D collaboration in the RT in Japan is overall low and dominated by inter-firm collaborations; but it has increased between 1991 and 2004, especially in the case of collaboration between firms and universities. Second, R&D collaboration has apparently a positive impact on the quality of the patents, but should be more carefully investigated. Third, we find a significant heterogeneity across firms in the practices of collaborations (number of collaborations, choice of partners and "fidelity" with the partners). Fourth, these patterns are tentatively explained by the structural characteristics of the RT (by reference to a transaction cost argument and to the role of science-based technologies) and by firms' capabilities hypothesis; however, it is not possible to clearly identify if one theoretical hypothesis is better supported by the facts.
Download Info
To download:
If you experience problems downloading a file, check if you have the
proper application to
view it first. Information about this may be contained
in the File-Format links below. In case of further problems read
the IDEAS help
page. Note that these files are not on the IDEAS
site. Please be patient as the files may be large.
Publisher Info
Paper provided by CIRJE, Faculty of Economics, University of Tokyo in its series CIRJE F-Series with number
CIRJE-F-453.
References listed on IDEAS Please report citation or reference errors to , or , if you are the registered author of the cited work, log in to your RePEc Author Service profile, click on "citations" and make appropriate adjustments.:
Hagedoorn, John & Link, Albert N. & Vonortas, Nicholas S., 2000.
"Research partnerships1,"
Research Policy,
Elsevier, vol. 29(4-5), pages 567-586, April.
[Downloadable!] (restricted)