The Impact of Public R&D Funding on Open Innovation

While the effects of public R&D funding on innovation inputs, outputs and strategies of firms have been studied extensively, little is known about the impact public R&D funding may have on open innovation practices. We made several hypotheses about different effects of public subsidies from the open innovation point of view and then tested these hypotheses with data that comes from a survey on innovation practices in China, Finland and Spain. More specifically, the prevalence of open innovation in a country was hypothesized to be related to the level of public R&D funding. The results show that Chinese firms make external technology/IP acquisitions more often, as well as engage more frequently in selling of intellectual assets, than their Spanish (and Finnish) counterparts. The results also show that Chinese firms are less likely to make new collaboration agreements after participating in publicly funded R&D projects. The findings therefore generally support the idea that a lower level of available public R&D funding facilitates the adoption of open innovation practices in firms.