Organizational Innovations in the Public Science Sector: An International Comparison of Cooperative Research Programs

This research is about the transformation of the organization of R&D activities in the public sector. We conceptualize such changes as intentional organizational innovations aimed to foster the collaboration between science and industry, improving the flexibility of the organizational model and strengthen the connection between research and society. We focus on the case of innovative public programs for cooperative research around the world. Through a brief review of the literature, we discuss a typology that has been proposed for classifying cooperative research programs and organizations based on two dimensions: institutional embeddedness and firm participation. We test the validity of such typology through an international comparison of policies and programs including countries from Asia, Europe, North America and Oceania. Our findings show that, despite many cross-countries differences, there are also some common trends that can be partially captured by the proposed typology. Other implications for studying organizational innovations in public research are discussed