Obstacles of innovation and institutional support in the cooperation agreements

Purpose - The purpose of this paper is to analyze the effects of obstacles and institutional factors on the cooperation for innovation. The collaboration between different types of organizations has been seen as a strategy that allows the firms to obtain reciprocal benefits, and that incentivises innovation. However, following D’Esteet al.(2012) and Antonioliet al.(2017), the authors assume that the decision to cooperate is perceived as a strategy to overcome the obstacles and barriers of the innovation process. Design/methodology/approach - The authors analyze these questions in the frame of the PITEC-2013 data that covers the period 2012–2013 and includes 5,461 Spanish innovative companies. Findings - The results support that an important drive for the firm’s cooperation is to overcome the obstacles of the innovation process. Moreover, the type of partner for cooperation is influenced by the different perception that those companies have on the obstacles to innovation. Additionally, results contribute to the regional literature with new empirical evidence to characterize regions in terms of innovation. Such factors shed new light about the intensity of regional innovation and variables of the cooperation pattern. Originality/value - Considering that a fourth of the Spanish companies develop technological cooperation agreements (PITEC, 2013), it is still observed that the level of cooperation and their results are lower with respect to other countries in the environment, therefore to analyze the role of cooperation agreements, evaluating the factors that characterize the dynamics of these agreements, is a critical research question for the Spanish economy.