Market, Firm, and Project-level Effects on the Innovation Impact of FP RTD Projects

This paper explores the determinants of the innovation impact of publicly funded R&D projects along three broad dimensions, namely project, firm and market-related factors. In addition to these factors we examine the attributes of the research result per se and aspects of the commercialization process. The observations from empirical and qualitative analyses are based on R&D projects funded by the Fifth and Sixth Research Framework Programmes of the European Union. Firm size, prior experience, innovation culture, the nature of the project itself, explicit intension to commercialize, consortium management and strategy are the factors with the strongest effect on project success, defined in terms of product/process innovation and/or technical knowledge creation. The paper provides important implications for the organization, objectives, and management of public programmes that fund R&D and for project and participant selection.