Inter-organisational collaborations, innovation and intellectual property: a conditional mediation model

Abstract

This paper explores the interaction between public research organisations (PROs) and firms towards introducing innovations and applying for an intellectual property. These contributions are based on a survey of manufacturing companies that cooperate with the largest Spanish PRO, Spanish National Research Council (CSIC). The estimated model focus on the inter-organisational collaboration (IOC), innovation (INNOV) and intellectual property (IP), and the relationship between these constructs. To analyse direct and mediated relationship, this work applies partial least squares (PLS) to a sample of 295 industrial companies. The paper discusses these findings and their implications.