Universities and collaborative innovation in EC-funded research projects: An analysis based on Innovation Radar data

The European Commission's Framework Programme (FP) constitutes an important share in R&D expenditures in Europe. For example, the Horizon 2020 is the biggest EU Research and Innovation programme ever with nearly €80 billion of funding available over 7 years (2014 to 2020). In addition to finance science and technology development, one of the main objectives of the FP is to foster international collaboration among research organizations and private firms, both large and SMEs. Collaboration is a key conduit for innovation-related knowledge flows both for firms that use R&D and for those that are not R&D-active. The main idea behind is that innovation often results from the interaction and cooperative efforts of different organisation devoted to the achievement of a common goal. More...