Based on a sample of German innovating firms that contains information on formal and informal innovation cooperation between customers and suppliers, we state that firms perceive informal cooperation as being more important than formal cooperation modes. We then investigate the determinants of firms? decisions to engage into the respective cooperation modes. In line with previous empirical work, we do not find much empirical evidence for the relevance of incoming spillovers. In addition, our results suggest that this finding holds as well for informal cooper- ations. A firm?s ability to protect its proprietary innovations, however seems to be a key determinant of formal as well as informal cooperations. Furthermor absorptive capacity and the organizational structur of in-house R&D play an important role. Another relevant driver of vertical cooperations are the innovation dynamics at the industry level. Firms who operate an R&D department and firms who are involved in costly R&D projects tend to cooperate formally rather than informally. --
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 ZEW - Zentrum für Europäische Wirtschaftsforschung / Center for European Economic Research in its series ZEW Discussion Papers with number
04-11.
Find related papers by JEL classification: O32 - Economic Development, Technological Change, and Growth - - Technological Change - - - Management of Technological Innovation and R&D D21 - Microeconomics - - Production and Organizations - - - Firm Behavior L13 - Industrial Organization - - Market Structure, Firm Strategy, and Market Performance - - - Oligopoly and Other Imperfect Markets O31 - Economic Development, Technological Change, and Growth - - Technological Change - - - Innovation and Invention: Processes and Incentives
Cited by: (explanations, 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.)