International partnerships for knowledge in business and academia - A comparison between Europe and the USA

Inter-firm strategic technology collaborations are more and more frequently used as a source of knowledge. American corporations do not just collaborate among themselves, but they have proven to be very attractive partners also for European Corporations. However, technological co-operation among European firms strongly declined in the 1990s, not only in relative terms, but also in absolute terms. We compare these trends with what has happened in academic collaborations measured by scientific co-authored papers. In this domain, Europeans are more and more likely to collaborate among each other, and they are also becoming more attractive for American scientists. Since one of the core objectives of the European Union science and technology policy has been to foster collaboration, we can deduct that this has been a success in the field of academia, but a failure in the business field. A few tentative explanations and policy implications are addressed. (C) 2003 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.