Boundary spanning R&D collaboration: Key enabling technologies and missions as alleviators of proximity effects?
研究了荷兰2013-2018年企业间研发合作项目，发现关键赋能技术能降低认知邻近性对合作的影响，而使命导向项目反而促进认知相近企业合作，可能限制知识多样性。
Two main targets of contemporary preferential innovation policy support, especially in Europe, are key enabling technologies (KETs) and innovation ‘missions’ focused on solving societal challenges. Both topics are associated with uniting disparate sets of capabilities, either by driving technology-based innovation into various application domains or by eliciting interdisciplinary and cross-sectoral solutions to urgent societal demands. In this study we assess to what extent pre-commercial R&D collaborations span geographic and cognitive boundaries. We analyze firm-level tie formation in Dutch collaborative R&D projects initiated in the period 2013–2018. Gravity models reveal that, while results for geographic proximity are mixed, some KET types are indeed related to projects in which cognitive proximity is significantly less relevant for tie formation. This contrasts with the findings for projects that retroactively received a mission label. Projects on health and care missions, and especially energy transition and sustainability missions, instead spur collaborations between cognitively proximate firms. The latter suggests that without additional policy intervention, such projects might interconnect similar rather than dissimilar knowledge bases. We conclude by discussing research and policy implications.