Stylised facts on R&D alliances Seminario Internacional Globalisacion, Conocimiento y Desarollo

1. Stylised facts on R&D alliancesSeminario Internacional Globalisacion, Conocimiento y Desarollo Julia Taddei Stradi MATISSE University Paris 1 Sorbonne COSTECH University of Compiegne

2. Introduction • R&D Alliances are perceived as a key factor of innovation and growth in the knowledge driven economy (Cohen &Levinthal, Lundvall,…) • They offer a real opportunity of transition to the firms allowing them to escape from path dependancy by increasing their absorptive and emitive capacity and by favouring the transmission of tacit and specific knowledge. • Nevertheless their results are inequal, we therefore need to analyse the hole process into finding the secret of this differential of performance. We have then stylised some facts raised by the litterature on alliances.

3. Plan of the presentation • Introduction • 1. Competences and gouvernance of cooperation • 2. Behaviour and gouvernance structure:a complex dynamic • 3. Gouvernance Structure and Performance • 4. Repetition and learning • Concluding remarks.

4. 1. Competences and gouvernance of cooperation. • 1rst feed back loop: • The need of competences of certain degree of specificity causes the birth of the cooperation and the selection of the partner . • But this degree of specificity is reduced during the R&D cooperation process itself. • The reproduction of the process is therefore uncertain.

5. 2. Behaviour and gouvernance structure:a complex dynamic • 2d feed back loop: In a context of uncertainty the selection of the partner is positively influenced the direct or undirect knowledge of this partner. This trust then influe positively on the effective behaviour of the partner that will transform the next period anticipation. Trust is therefore a prerequisite to commitment as initial conditions as well as a self enforcing phenomena while running the dynamic.

6. 3rd loop: Trust is cause,substitute and consequence of the governance structure. • 4rth loop : between individual behavioural properties of the firms and the system taken as a hole not only as an agregate of these individuals but also as a determining force per se through judicial and legislative institutions.

7. 3. Gouvernance Structure and Performance • As gouvernance structures are hardly optimal by the beginning, it is the adaptability of the partners more or less innovative in terms of institutions that will be central in the alliance success. • This phenomena is enforced by the permanent transformation of the characteristics of the transaction, as behaviour and asset specificity are evolving during the cooperation process.

8. 4. Repetition and learning • The longer term evolution shows factors of continuity across learnings. But the causal ambiguity of the frequency on gouvernance structure whose replicates and reduces transaction costs at the same time makes the result unpredictable. • The complexity of the previous loops makes it even more complicated.

9. A theoritical problem • Behavioural organisational and technological imbricated feed back loops characterise R&D alliances process. • Nevertheless, theories until now do not permit to understand this dynamic as a hole as they are limiting their relevance landscape to one ways relationships.

10. Resulting in a political one • The neglect of these feed backs generates certain difficulties while trying to evaluate the different policy effects induced by different system of property rights on the dynamics… • This might explain why this topic has been so neglected by the litterature.