Collaboration Patterns and Product Innovation in the Basque Country. Does a Firm’s Nationality Matter?

• Published in: Journal of entrepreneurship, management and innovation Vol. 10; no. 3; pp. 29 - 56
• Main Author: Heras, Henar Alcalde
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Foundation for the Dissemination of Knowledge and Science "Cognitione" 01-01-2014; Fundacja Upowszechniająca Wiedzę i Naukę "Cognitione"; Cognitione Foundation for the Dissemination of Knowledge and Science
• Subjects: collaboration; Essay|Book Review |Scientific Life; innovation; ownership nationality; product novelty; product novelty; innovation; ownership nationality; collaboration
• ISSN: 2299-7075; 2299-7326
• DOI: 10.7341/20141032

More and more, the ability to innovate can be considered as an explanatory factor
in determining the long-term potential of firms to be competitive. Therefore, it is
of increasing importance to understand the critical success factors behind notably
radical product innovations. The present paper explores the yields and results in
terms of a
series of competitiveness indicators that domestic and foreign firms in
the Basque Country obtain from technological collaboration practices. In particular,
the study seeks to assess differences in the way these two groups of firms organize
their technological partnerships (in terms of the geographical spread of partners
with whom they cooperate and the purposes for which they deploy collaboration: for
commercial or science/knowledge generation), and the comparative differences that
stem from their respective practices. The study uses firm level data from the Euskadi
Innovation Survey 2011, for firms located in the Basque Country. The paper finds
that (a) technological collaborations comprising different types of partners have the
greatest positive impact on innovation novelty, and (b) when looking at the firm’s
nationality, collaboration strategies developed by foreign firms have a
higher impact
on achieving novel innovation. We posit that the higher degree of product innovation
we observe among foreign firms – as opposed to domestic firms in the Basque
Country – relies on their ability to benefit from both inter-regional partnerships and
commercial-based networks for the sake of innovation purposes