Multilateral R&D collaboration: An ERGM application on biotechnology

Abstract

This chapter presents an empirical study on formation of multilateral R&D collaboration networks among organizations. The objective of the study is to investigate how geography and heterogeneity in institutional types affect the way organizations come together around consortiums to perform R&D. It makes use of data on project proposals submitted to the 7th Framework Program (FP) in the field of biotechnology to construct a two-mode network. It employs extensions of exponential random graph models (ERGM) (Frank and Strauss, J Am Stat Assoc 81(395):832–842, 1986; Wasserman and Pattison, Psychometrika 61(3):401–425, 1996, for affiliation networks (Wang et al., Soc Netw 31:12–25, 2009). The results show that higher education institutions and research institutions tend to show higher connectivity and hence bridge learning across consortiums. Furthermore, organizations located in the core European countries tend to participate in the same consortium and these consortiums tend to be small in size. Finally, homophily in institutional types and network effects do not affect the formation process.