RNDNET · R&D Network Life Cycles

It is widely agreed that research and development (R&D), with its subsequent technological innovations, is the driving force in economic growth. R&D activities are distributed across different economic actors, notably firms, which interact in many ways, e.g. through collaboration or knowledge transfer. Using a conceptual network approach, these firms can be seen as nodes and their interactions as links of a network that may evolve over time, both with respect to the actors and their interactions. The goal of this project is to understand the evolution and performance of R&D networks. In doing so, the project wants to explain the formation of R&D networks as a purely endogenous phenomenon, emerging from the behavior of individual firms. Many studies have been devoted to the investigation of the consequences of a certain R&D network structure on a firm's performance. However, only little is known about the time evolution of this structure, or the antecedents of this evolution. Emphasizing temporal aspects, this proposal focuses both on the relationship between the structure of an R&D network and its performance, on an individual firm and aggregate industry level, and on the dynamics of network creation and evolution.