1 The role ofInter-Organizational Collaboration within Innovation Strategies: Towards a Portfolio Approach

Within the innovation literature, inter-organizational collaboration is being advanced as instrumental for improving the innovative performance of firms. In addition inter-organizational collaboration can be instrumental for addressing the multiple requirements innovation strategies entail. At the same time- large scale-empirical evidence for such a relation is scarce. Within this paper we examine whether evidence can be found for the idea that inter-organizational collaboration supports the effectiveness of innovation strategies. Multivariate and Tobit analyses of data on Belgian manufacturing firms, collected by means of the CIS survey (n=221), reveals a positive relationship between inter-organizational collaboration and innovative performance. Moreover the fmdings reported here suggest the relevancy of adopting a portfolio approach towards inter-organizational collaboration. 2 Introduction: Organizing for Innovation. Innovation, and more in particular technological innovation, has long bee