Knowledge spillovers, R&D partnerships and innovation performance

A prime motive for innovative firms to seek collaboration is to gain access to knowledge resources. Firms that already benefit from knowledge spillovers without establishing formal collaborative agreements, may abstain from embarking on such agreements as they are costly. The propensity to (start to or continue to) collaborate with other business partners (customers, suppliers, competitors) will be associated with whether firms already benefit from access to knowledge resources, either through existing collaboration or otherwise. This research studies the interplay of formal collaboration and incoming spillovers by distinguishing four collaboration-spillovers scenarios: ‘connected’, ‘detached’, ‘informed’ or ‘extraneous’. Using a large panel data set of Spanish firms during the period 2004–2016 we examine effects of the four scenarios on firms' propensity for continuing or starting collaboration. We subsequently estimate the effect of these scenarios on firm innovation performance. Our findings suggest that incoming knowledge spillovers may amplify or limit collaboration, but that they only partly substitute formal collaboration when it comes to impact on performance.