Interfirm cooperative R&D agreements are becoming more frequent, as firms seek to avoid market failures and exploit the competitive advantages of collaborating vertically with suppliers on the one hand and customers on the other. This paper investigates the phenomenon of vertical R&D linkages in...

The recent surge of interfirm cooperative agreements can be seen to express a way for firms to respond to and organize market failure, especially in technology markets. The incentives for firms to internalize activities are to avoid the disadvantages, or capitalize on the advantages, of...

The aim of this paper is to empirically investigate the sources of technological opportunities. The analysis is based on a survey conducted among 358 Swiss R&D executives in 1988. The most important results can be summarized as follows: 1. Market organizations are perceived as the most important...