Sticky partnerships or fresh starts? How failed project applications shape organisations’ collaborative behaviour in R&D networks
研究了研发网络中组织联合申请项目失败后，如何影响未来合作关系的形成，发现失败比成功更能促进后续合作，尤其对认知距离远的伙伴影响更大。
Prior inter-organisational collaboration is a well-established antecedent of tie formation in competitive publicly funded R&D networks. But what happens when organisations come together to develop a project proposal and apply for funding, but their application is unsuccessful? This paper investigates how the joint experience of failure influences future tie formation, and how this effect varies for organisations with different levels of cognitive proximity. The analysis builds on a policy-induced collaborative network of approved and rejected R&D project proposals in Valencia region (Spain), in 2016 – 2022. The findings suggest that unsuccessful funding applications have a positive and stronger influence on partners’ future tie formation than successful ones. Moreover, the propensity of actors to re-engage following a rejection is greater if they are cognitively distant. The paper demonstrates that empirical work on R&D network dynamics may be systematically underrating partners’ prior funding application failures as a fundamental antecedent of tie formation.