| Budget Amount *help |
¥2,700,000 (Direct Cost: ¥2,700,000)
Fiscal Year 2005: ¥600,000 (Direct Cost: ¥600,000)
Fiscal Year 2004: ¥2,100,000 (Direct Cost: ¥2,100,000)
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| Research Abstract |
The purposes of this project are to compare the patterns of inter-firm R&D cooperation and industry-university alliances by small businesses with those by large firms and to analyze the impacts of different patterns of these alliances on the performance of the participants. For these purposes, I conducted a postal survey with 10.000 manufacturing firms in March 2005.
With regard to the patterns of technological alliances, I found that the top managers of small firms are more likely to be directly concerned with the cooperation than those of large firms and that small firms are less likely to have contracts with their partners and apply for patents than large firms. Moreover, remarkable differences were found between small and large firms with regard to the type and location of the research institutions as cooperative partners and the way to find their partners.
I obtained evidence that relatively large and R&D oriented firms managed by university graduates from the faculties of natural sciences or engineering are more likely to participate in technological alliances with universities and research institutes than the others. Further, I found that, among small firms that participated in these alliances, the firms that applied the outcomes for patents tend to be research-oriented firms managed by CEOs with university education in natural sciences or engineering, cooperate with national universities in remote regions, and find the partners through academic networks and publications.
I also carried out an econometric analysis of the effects of the inter-firm R&D cooperation on the research productivity of the participants, using the micro data from official statistics. The results demonstrate that, after controlling for the research input and capability, cooperative R&D has both direct and indirect effects on the research productivity of small firms, while this is not the case for large firms.
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