R&D Cooperation and Firm Performance – Evaluation of Partnering Strategies in the Automotive Industry

Abstract

The importance of R&D cooperation has been recognized as a consequence of growing complexity, dynamism of the environment, increasing risks and escalating costs of innovation. Collaboration with firms and academic institutions enables organizations to exploit external resources and competencies not available internally and adding additional value to the in-house ideas. Despite the large number of publications related to R&D cooperation, empirical studies on the impact of firm’s strategic partnering on firm performances are rather scarce. Thus, the goal of this paper is to contribute to the existing literature by discussing the strategic behavior of firms derived from the patent co-ownership network in order to establish a link between the variety of close relationships and the number of sold products. This paper discusses the influence of different strategic directions on firm performance, whereby the impact of uncertainty regarding the future technology development and the market acceptance is specifically high. First, the starting point is the analysis of co-patenting structure in the field automotive industry using patents related to lithium-ion batteries. This study investigates the characteristics of each resulting cluster derived from the collaboration network and then explores the heterogeneities of R&D collaboration strategies differentiating between three types of strategic partnering: doing-it-alone, concentration on single partners and open partnering. Second, analysis is undertaken to establish an empirical linkage between the strategic partnering behavior and the number of sold electric vehicles. The results indicate that there is no direct causal link between the intensity of the cooperation and performance.