The multifaceted nature of cooperation for innovation, ICT and innovative outcomes: evidence from UK Microdata

Cooperation in innovation activities is a key building block in forming entrepreneurial innovation networks. However, the impact on innovation of different forms of cooperation among multiple stakeholders composing a firm’s relational environment can be dramatically different, depending on whether the modalities of cooperation are tacit or explicit and the type of functional relations between the cooperating organizations. Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) facilitate cooperation and innovation outcomes. The main aim of this paper is to disentangle the effects of explicit vs. tacit and complementarity vs. competitive modalities of cooperation in innovation activities on innovation outputs. Based on pooled UK Microdata from 2004 to 2010, this paper’s main finding is that tacit cooperation, emerging from R&D and ICTs spillovers, increases firms’ likelihood to introduce process, product, and organizational innovations. We also find that a firm’s functional relation with its cooperating peers determines the sign of the association with innovation outcomes: explicit cooperation among competitors lowers the level of innovations. In contrast, cooperation along the value chain brings more innovations.