The role of costs and the delegation of decision making in R&D cooperation: implications for university-business collaborations

This research project will investigate the role of transaction costs and the decentralisation of decision-making in firms’ propensity to engage in basic research collaborations with universities, using a quantitative approach complemented by interviews with R&D managers in industry. The project aims to provide science policymakers with a better understanding of how the potential for collaborative R&D between universities and businesses varies across industrial, intra-organisational and inter-organisational boundaries. This should enable the UK government to better target and design government incentives in this area and ultimately help address the UK’s relatively poor performance in innovation and the exploitation of basic research.