European Union-United States knowledge networks in sience and technology: Analyzing trans-Atlantic public-private research collaboration

Collaborative, team-based research is now a prevalent mode for conducting fundamental scientific research in many fields. Moreover, collaboration in scientific research is often both trans-organizational and trans-national in nature: that is, collaborations frequently involve researchers based within different organizational entities and located in different countries (Georghiou, 1998; U.S. National Science Foundation, 2002). Public-private research collaborations are one mechanism by which firms can access or create critical knowledge for use in industrial innovation. Facilitating linkages between public research organizations and firms is viewed as a critical mechanism for increasing the efficiency and outputs of national innovation systems (Rosenberg and Nelson, 1993). However, very little is known about how non-domestic firms are involved in collaboration with national public sector research institutions, and the role that these trans-national collaborations play in industrial technology development.;This study proposes to address that issue by analyzing a database containing one form of output from public-private research collaborations between U.S. and European union organizations: peer-reviewed scientific and technical publications. This analysis will investigate the following research questions: (1) How prevalent are such collaborations in the international science and technology enterprise, and what are their trends in growth and research configurations; (2) How are such collaborations related to various aspects of technological innovation in firms, such as nature of technology development in particular industries and corporate processes for acquiring and exploiting new scientific knowledge? (3) How does participation in such collaborations relate to firm-level innovation and corporate performance?;The following methods are used to conduct the analysis: (1) Identify different patterns in collaboration over successive overlapping timeframes. (2) Using cluster analysis, divide the firms in each industry into different strategic groups based on their patenting output and financial performance. (3) Analyze differences in patterns of participation in collaborations among these groups using t-test of mean values of the dependent variables (after Bierly and Chakrabarty, 1996).;The analysis intends to show (a) what patterns in collaboration are found in trans-Atlantic public-private research collaborations; (b) indicator of how firm and industry traits affect collaborative behavior; (c) correlation between patterns in collaboration and R&D productivity and firm performance.