Project failures and innovation performance in university–firm collaborations

The main aim of this paper is to analyze the factors affecting the likelihood of the failure of innovation projects (delay or abandonment) and the relation between project failure and innovation performance. Specific emphasis is given to the role of collaboration in general, and to collaboration with universities and public research institutions (PRI) in particular. We use data about German firms for the period 2002–2005, merging the results of two successive Community Innovation Surveys. We show that collaboration is associated with the Delay and, to a lesser extent, the Abandonment of innovation projects. Collaboration with PRI does not increase either the likelihood of project failure or the innovation performance, compared to collaboration with firms. We also show that there is a positive relation between the delay of projects and the innovation performance of firms. The occurrence of delays can be considered as a sort of ‘necessary’ cost in order to raise the level of innovation performance