The Effects of Cooperation Between Internal and External stakeholders in R&D Projects on Perceived Success

Successfully transforming R&D investments into added value is important for increasing the competitiveness of a developing country with limited resources. However, due to the high uncertainty and complexity involved in R&D, even defining success can be controversial. The motivation of this study is to clarify what success in R&D means and then to examine the effect of R&D collaborations, because R&D often involves complex and highly uncertain tasks that require different expertise in order to work together. Semi-structured face-to-face interviews were conducted with 13 R&D experts in order to explore the perceptions and experiences of senior managers and project teams with regard to success and collaborations. Some of the findings obtained from the qualitative analysis are as follows: Besides the concrete outputs determined by the project objectives and factors such as creating knowledge and a culture of cooperation, an R&D project is perceived as successful if it triggers new projects in the future; also, deviations from the budget or timeframe are usually expected. Collaborations are beneficial for projects carried out with a minimum number of partners whose duties are clearly defined and who have complementary competencies. The complexity increases when extra partners are involved in a project and when large differences occur at the level of the parties’ commitment or goals.