SME participation in research grant consortia—the emergence of coordinated attention in collaborative innovation

Christoph Grimpe (), Wolfgang Sofka and Andreas P. Distel ()
Additional contact information
Christoph Grimpe: Copenhagen Business School
Andreas P. Distel: Rotterdam School of Management, Erasmus University

Small Business Economics, 2022, vol. 59, issue 4, No 12, 1567-1592

Abstract: Abstract Research funding organizations routinely encourage SMEs to collaborate with organizations of different institutional backgrounds, such as other firms, universities, or research organizations. These collaborations are supposed to involve SMEs in knowledge flows across boundaries and generate innovative solutions to complex problems. However, we know little about how the project partners determine the priorities of their joint research in the first place and how the institutional composition influences priority setting. In this paper, we study attention coordination among SMEs and their partners for the emergence of priorities in joint research grant proposals. Applying content analysis to 207 grant proposals of innovation consortia that have received funding in the EU’s Horizon 2020 program, we find that increasingly diverse consortia shift attention away from technological novelty and market creation towards more consideration for the innovation ecosystem.

Keywords: SME; Collaborative innovation; Innovation consortia; Grant proposal; Coordination; Attention-based view (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: L26 O31 O38 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://link.springer.com/10.1007/s11187-021-00582-6 Abstract (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:kap:sbusec:v:59:y:2022:i:4:d:10.1007_s11187-021-00582-6

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.springer. ... 29/journal/11187/PS2

DOI: 10.1007/s11187-021-00582-6

Access Statistics for this article

Small Business Economics is currently edited by Zoltan J. Acs and David B. Audretsch

More articles in Small Business Economics from Springer
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().