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Developing innovations requires technical knowledge. Due to rapidly evolving new technologies, increasingly complex techniques, and rising R&D costs, it is becoming increasingly challenging for companies to have all the necessary knowledge for innovation in-house. As a result, the number of collaborative relationships has significantly increased in recent years. Dialogic extensively uses network analysis as a method and is constantly working to expand its knowledge in this area. This internship also utilises network analysis and examines the length of collaborative relationships. Based on the length of certain product development times, a certain length of collaborative relationships could be expected. Research on this length of collaborative relationships has never been done. Does the duration of these relationships correlate with the degree of knowledge complementarity between two companies? Astrid van den Berg will address this question as part of her thesis (master's programme in Science and Innovation Management, University of Utrecht) at Dialogic.
The research focuses on the biotechnology sector in the Netherlands, which is particularly suitable for this study. Due to the diverse and complex technical knowledge within this sector, and because it is still a relatively young sector, companies within it have developed various specialties. Furthermore, techniques, skills, and resources are evolving rapidly, making it difficult for companies in this sector to keep up with developments. Companies are compelled to collaborate with others to survive in this sector and gain access to the necessary complementary technical knowledge. Bringing a product to market in this sector takes approximately 10-12 years. Based on this, long-term collaborative relationships could be expected. However, previous research has shown that these relationships often last less than a year. This contradiction is noteworthy and will be examined in this thesis.
This research is conducted using a patent citation analysis. When companies substantially use another patent in their patent, they must refer to that prior patent. This method provides insight into the extent to which companies rely on each other's knowledge. Additionally, it allows for mapping out the knowledge complementarities between the companies. Patent citation analysis can also be used as a way to analyse a network. However, this method has never been used before to map out knowledge complementarities and is therefore an experimental way of operationalisation.
If you would like to know more about this research, please contact Astrid van den Berg.