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Firms are increasingly organizing cross-regional R&D collaborations among different units. Such collaborations should promote knowledge flows across distance and bring new knowledge to the local communities. However, the nature of cross-regional collaborations varies widely depending on the organizations within which they are organized. Compared with collaborations within small firms, collaborations in large firms tend to be routinized, which reduces the need for interpersonal interactions and increases the dependence on organizational structure. As a result, additional spillover from cross-regional collaboration is likely to be lower if the collaboration is within large firms. We extend this argument to the regional level and hypothesize that regions with a higher level of cross-regional collaborations tend to generate more valuable technologies, but when large firms dominate the formation of such collaborations, the marginal benefits of cross-regional collaboration are significantly reduced. Using a data set from the pharmaceutical industry between 1975 and 2001, we find support for our hypotheses. We conduct a series of robustness tests to check the consistency of our results.

We examine the determinants of multinational firms’ propensity to conduct R&D activities in host countries, with specific attention to the influence of host countries’ university research. We consider heterogeneous locational drivers related to the type of R&D activity: basic research, applied research, development for local markets, and development for global markets. Drawing on official survey data on R&D activities by 498 Japanese multinational firms in 24 host countries and estimating two-stage models, we find that the likelihood that firms conduct R&D in a host country is generally increasing in the strength of university research. Conditional on a firm’s R&D presence, university research strength is associated with a greater propensity to conduct (basic) research activities rather than (local) development, while the intensity of host country university–industry collaboration is most strongly associated with applied research. Host country experience and the depth of the firm’s manufacturing presence are also associated higher propensities to engage in research.

This study investigates the conditions that shape the contractual structure of pharmaceutical-biotechnology R&D agreements and whether these collaborations have produced measurable impact on the overall R&D productivity of pharmaceutical companies. In one section, the effect of uncertainty due to the advances in technology on the structure of R&D contracts is discussed. Specifically, it is shown that newer technologies associated with higher uncertainty result in the choice of more hierarchical contract structures. In addition, the significance of R&D collaborations on the overall innovation process of pharmaceutical companies is evaluated. The results indicate that only some types of R&D alliances, signed in earlier stages of research, have a significant role in the patent production and drug discovery process.

Firms tend to transfer more knowledge in technology joint ventures compared to contractual technology agreements. Using insights from new institutional economics, this chapter explores to what extent the alliance governance association with interfirm knowledge transfer is sensitive to an evolving industry norm of collaboration connected to the logic of open innovation. The chapter examines 1,888 dyad-year observations on firms engaged in technology alliances in the U.S. information technology industry during 1980–1999. Using fixed effects linear models, it analyzes longitudinal changes in the alliance governance association with interfirm knowledge transfer, and how such changes vary in magnitude across bilateral versus multipartner alliances, and across computers, telecommunications equipment, software, and microelectronics subsectors. Increases in industry-level alliance activity during 1980–1999 improved the knowledge transfer performance of contractual technology agreements relative to more hierarchical equity joint ventures. This effect was concentrated in bilateral rather than multipartner alliances, and in the software and microelectronics rather than computers and telecommunications equipment subsectors. Therefore, an evolving industry norm of collaboration may sometimes make more arms-length governance of a technology alliance a credible substitute for equity ownership, which can reduce the costs of interfirm R&D. Overall, the chapter shows that the performance of material practices that constitute innovation ecosystems, such as interfirm technology alliances, may differ over time subject to prevailing institutional norms of open innovation. This finding generates novel implications for the literatures on alliances, open innovation, and innovation ecosystems.

The main objective of this chapter is to explore how the adoption of corporate social responsibility (CSR) practices is associated with firm innovativeness, utilising a rich data survey of 3,500 Greek SMEs. Furthermore, by classifying SMEs into two groups, the high-performing and low-performing in terms of CSR, we explore whether and in which way the application of CSR moderates the relationship between innovation inputs (such as R&D expenditure and R&D collaboration) and innovation output. The findings obtained from the first stage of our analysis suggest that CSR practices drive the innovation process as well as the innovation output of SMEs, supporting thus SDG9. The empirical results obtained from the second stage of analysis indicate that the wide adoption of CSR practices may stand as an alternative way to established and more expensive drivers of innovation output in adverse times when firms lack financial resources especially in crisis-hit economies such as the case of Greece.

To resolve an inherent dilemma in extant research on geographically dispersed research and development (R&D), this study explores interdependencies between formal and informal network structures. Firms that seek to benefit from the decentralization associated with disperse R&D must align it with an informal structure that enhances organizational members’ motivation to share and assimilate their unique knowledge and skills. On the basis of an investigation among 424 US biotechnology firms between 1973 and 2003, this study reveals the moderating effect of the firm’s informal social structure on the effect that geographically dispersed R&D personnel have on the exploration of new technological opportunities. Specifically, the higher the social network density among R&D members, the more likely geographic disparity is to affect exploration; however, this likelihood decreases with an increase in power asymmetries. These results offer insights into the conditions in which the appropriate management of geographically dispersed R&D varies.

The essential investments in new product development (NPD) made by industrial companies entail effective management of NPD activities. In this context, performance measurement is one of the means that can be employed in the pursuit of effectiveness.

While earlier research discussed networking and alliance strategies of born globals on a strategic level, this paper investigates and analyses the specific organizational skills that enable the firms to successfully initiate, manage and finish their R&D alliances with Multinational Enterprises (MNEs). It is discussed how the specific aspects of the alliance capability can help born globals to counteract the challenges and risks of collaborating with MNEs. A longitudinal process study of a Danish technology born global with three embedded cases of its R&D and marketing alliances with Asian MNEs is discussed. The organizational skills comprising the alliance capability are defined to be internal and external assessment skills, need detection and coupling skills, asset protection skills, project management skills, termination skills and the learning processes to build the alliance capability further. A set of propositions is developed to tie these organizational skills to alliance performance.

To investigate the impact of knowledge-intensive FDI in the Chinese pharmaceutical industry, this study analyzes the activity of foreign MNEs operating in this context by exploring their innovative background, the organizational arrangements they use for local knowledge creation and the performance of their local innovative processes. Based on the analysis of the universe of USPTO pharmaceutical patents applied for between 1975 and 2010 and granted to foreign assignees utilizing the work of Chinese inventors, our results show that, while the presence of foreign MNEs in the Chinese pharmaceutical industry entails a strong potential for positive externalities that could enhance the performance of the local innovation system, such externalities do not completely materialize yet, likely because of local actors’ limited absorptive capacity.

This chapter aims to investigate how a range of emerging trends within the international community can be used to build a connective educational ecosystem based on an inclusive and universal process (Biggeri et al., 2017; Ziegler, 2017). The starting question is: how multidisciplinary teams in Italy could take action toward inclusive education?

Partnering is becoming a central system organization strategy for schools to adopt for successful innovative teams with creative educational ideas (Kelly et al., 2002), and here it is declined in the Italian context in which inclusive education was officially embraced in 1977 as a national policy (D'Alessio, 2011). National legislation (104/92 Law) made explicit the mandate that students with disabilities receive their education (to the maximum extent possible) with nondisabled peers in the general education classroom using appropriate supplemental aids and services in the least-restrictive environment (Anastasiou et al., 2015; Canevaro & de Anna, 2010).

It is crucial to encourage new forms of practice which require collaboration capabilities (Hattie, 2015; Vangrieken et al., 2015) between multidisciplinary teams that comprised general teachers, special education teachers, health professionals, school psychologists, school leaders, and the students' family (Meirink et al., 2010). These resources could be distributed across inclusive ecosystems to support all students by enabling them to prosper in an increasingly diversified and complex environment in which creativity, ability to innovate, entrepreneurship, and a commitment to continuous learning are joint and connective (EU, 2008). This creates a state of positive multiagency collaboration that promotes the well-being of students and the system.