Managing Collaborative R&amp;D Projects

Fernandes, Gabriela; Dooley, Lawrence; O’Sullivan, David; Rolstadås, Asbjørn

doi:10.1007/978-3-030-61605-2_1

Cited by 8 publications

(10 citation statements)

References 62 publications

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“…Over the last decades, R&D activities have become more open and more collaborative (Dooley et al, 2016;Fernandes et al, 2020Fernandes et al, , 2021 and are often project-organised (Tiwana, 2008). Collaborative R&D projects provide multiple opportunities for the contributing organisations not only to advance their development thanks to complementary expertise and resources but also to benefit from knowledge transfer (Alexander et al, 2016) and organisational learning (Scandura, 2016;Fernandes et al, 2020), especially in the international context (Gubbins and Dooley, 2014;Ferreira et al, 2022).…”

Section: Inter-organisational Collaborative Randd In the Context Of P...mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Extant literature also highlighted the importance of the intra-organisational aspects for organisational learning and technology management (Argote and Hora, 2017), in particular in collaborative settings (Fernandes et al, 2021). At high TRLs, due to the required contextual conditions, the solutions developed by the projects compete with other demands for scarce resources.…”

Section: Theoretical Contributionsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The projects are characterised by complexity and interdependence of R&D collaborators (e.g. Bogers and Horst, 2013; Klessova et al, 2020; Fernandes et al, 2021), face technical uncertainties (König et al, 2013), and have multiple constraints in terms of e.g. budgets and timelines (vom Brocke and Lippe, 2015; Pinheiro et al, 2016).…”

Section: Literature Reviewmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Barriers to collaboration in the setting of inter‐organisation R&D projects include, for example deficiencies in alignment of interests, motivation, capability of involved actors, planning and governance of the collaboration (Nsanzumuhire and Groot, 2020), and lack of clear collaborative mechanisms and distribution of the roles of the actors (Hemmert et al, 2014; Canhoto et al, 2016; Wit‐de Vries et al, 2019). The literature also highlights the importance of the intra‐organisational aspects for technology management and organisational learning (Argote and Hora, 2017), in particular in collaborative settings (Fernandes et al, 2021), and the advantages of adaptation capabilities and flexibility for collaborative innovation (Davis and Eisenhardt, 2011).…”

Section: Literature Reviewmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…It has so far not been analysed in depth how and why the different stages of the maturation process interplay with the contextual conditions. A better understanding of the evolution of these conditions and of their influence on the collaboration in the projects also helps in tailoring the management of such projects to the needs (vom Brocke and Lippe, 2015; Fernandes et al, 2021).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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The interplay between the contextual conditions and the advancement of the technological maturity in inter‐organisational collaborative R&D projects: a qualitative study

2023

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This paper analyses the evolution of the contextual conditions during the advancement of the degree of technological maturity of innovative technical solutions and their interplay with the R&D processes in the setting of collaborative inter‐organisational publicly‐funded R&D projects. Extant literature investigated the role of contextual conditions for the development process of technologies across different settings, but the evolution of their role has not yet been analysed in detail during the same development process over different levels of maturity. It has also not been investigated how the inter‐organisational collaboration is affected by this interplay. To address this gap, we put in place exploratory qualitative research in the empirical setting of collaborative inter‐organisational R&D projects that were funded by the EU's Research and Innovation Framework Programmes. Such projects often advance the maturity of several new technical solutions in different constellations of partners within the same project and therefore provide rich data for our analysis. The research design is a comparative multiple case study. We studied 5 projects that developed 49 innovative technical solutions, adopting a grounded theory approach, through the analysis of the project documentation and semi‐structured interviews. The evolution of the non‐technical contextual conditions and their interplay with the R&D processes and the inter‐organisational collaboration were found to be similar across different technologies, but their role was significantly different at different stages of the advancement of maturity. Medium TRLs constituted a watershed for inter‐organisational cooperation, whereas when going to higher TRLs, the role of the intra‐organisational context became dominant. As a consequence, the changes of the contextual conditions should be anticipated by project planners and project managers to avoid that the R&D processes get stuck at medium technology readiness levels. We also discuss the implications for policy interventions when reaching higher TRLs is intended.

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