سازماندهی تحقیق و توسعه پروژه ها به سود حاصل از نوآوری: دیدگاه هایی از رویکرد "همکاری در عین رقابت"

Increasingly, technological innovation results from the joint creation effort of different players in the value chain, such as suppliers, customers, research centres and universities. Balancing co-operative and competitive forces in the innovation process to co-create value and to capture part of this value has become crucial to profit from innovation. In this article, we show that this tension between value creation and value capture is present in each R&D project. Drawing on the case of STMicroelectronics, we show that the balance of co-operative and competitive forces in R&D projects is made through the careful alignment of three variables: project knowledge attributes, project governance structure (internal development, co-operation or contracting), and project partner selection (firm or university). The capability to match these three elements explains the success of the innovation process of STMicroelectronics. Building on the experience of this firm, we provide some practical guidance on how managers should trade off these co-operative and competitive forces in organising their R&D projects.

A recent McKinsey Global Survey of top executives found that 70 per cent of respondents considered innovation one of their companies' top three strategic priorities for driving growth.1 The same survey found that fewer than half of the executives were satisfied with the financial returns on their investments in innovation. While innovation is now considered key for creating a sustainable competitive advantage, many firms struggle with its successful organisation. In this paper we show why balancing the concerns of creating value through innovation on the one hand, and capturing returns from innovation on the other is such a complicated task. This task requires aligning different elements at the R&D project level, i.e. each R&D project and activity needs its particular organisation, complicating the innovation management task considerably.

In this paper we provided a novel framework and original evidence to explain when and how a firm decides to establish inter-organisational agreements in R&D projects. To do so, we disentangled the intricate interactions of the elements that might explain the decision on the boundaries and the organisation of R&D activities by exploring the relationship between project knowledge attributes, form of governance and characteristics of potential partners. The nature of our sample can only provide preliminary and exploratory results, and although this study has the potential for application in other settings, caution must be exercised when generalising from only one case study based in a specific industry. Nonetheless, we believe that (a) the theoretical framework we developed, (b) the particular empirical setting of the study, and (c) the empirical results we observed, all present interesting implications and contributions.