Coopetition - collaboration between competitors

Abstract

Motivation & outline Collaboration for innovationIn today's global world, it is highly important for firms to gain and sustain a competitive advantage. In order to stay ahead of competition, firms are required to continuously innovate. Firms' own, internal resources are often not sufficient to develop novel ideas. Therefore, many firms open up their innovation process to outside parties (Laursen & Salter, 2014). Many companies among which for instance the Bayer AG and Philips 1 recognize this potential for joint value creation through knowledge sharing, such that research and development (R&D) can be accelerated, enhancing societal welfare through faster introduction of new products (Bayer AG, 2020; Koninklijke Philips N.V., 2021).Often, firms collaborate with a variety of different partners such as universities, customers, suppliers or competitors (see e.g. Belderbos et al., , 2006Belderbos et al., , 2018Cassiman & Veugelers, 2002;Un et al., 2010) to achieve different kinds of innovations. While suppliers' complementary but also similar resources are likely to help firms improve existing products, knowledge and insights provided by universities and customers enable firms to introduce new-to-themarket innovations (