Collaborative innovation in emerging innovation systems: Evidence from Central and Eastern Europe

Firms often lack competences and capabilities for creation and commercialization of innovations. The solution to this problem lies in sharing or acquisition of relevant resources through collaboration. The success of collaborative relationships depends on the type and the quality of partners involved and proximity between them. This is particularly true in emerging innovation systems of countries in transition from middle to high income levels. The objective of this paper is to explore whether collaboration with suppliers, customers, universities and research institutes and intra-group collaboration with partners of different origin in nine emerging innovation systems of Central and Eastern Europe facilitates commercialization of existing marginally modified, incrementally novel and radically novel products. Results of treatment analysis on a sample of over 10.000 firms from the Eurostat’s Community Innovation Survey reveal that domestic innovation competences and capabilities mostly fuel commercialization of existing products and that firms rely on a diverse network of collaborators. We find evidence of positive impact of collaboration on commercialization of existing products and to a lesser extent on incremental and radical innovations. Relevance of individual collaboration channels differs over countries. Among foreign partners, collaboration with entities from other European Union member states facilitates commercialization of existing products while partners from United States, China and India have positive effects on commercialization of incremental and radical innovations suggesting that cognitive proximity is more important than geographical, social, organizational and institutional proximities. Recommendations for formulation of innovation policies in emerging innovation systems are provided.