¿Con quién colaboran las empresas en el desarrollo de productos?: un análisis empírico exploratorio aplicado a las empresas innovadoras españolas

Inter-firm R$D collaboration has emerged as one of the key aspects in the analysis of the innovation process. In this paper some results from a survey on 'Collaboration in product development in Spain' (ECODEPE) are presented. The paper is an exploratory exercise aiming to identify and study the different types of firm collaborators and configurations of actors involved in innovation networks, in particular to determine the patterns and regularities that emerge from the collaboration in product development. First the paper describes the general features of the survey and the different categories used in the construction of types and patterns of collaborators. Second, the main arguments centre on describing inter-firm technological co-operation. Third, the results are presented of the analysis of the categories of collaborators, their various forms of association and the different types of patterns or clusters. Finally some conclusions are formulated, as well as some interpretation patterns based on the theory of resource dependence.