Evaluating government-sponsored R&D consortia in Japan: who benefits and how?

A large sample of government-sponsored R&D consortia in Japan is analyzed, based on the data of 237 consortia organized over 34 years and 398 responses to questionnaires distributed to high-level corporate R&D managers who have participated in R&D consortia. My analysis shows that there is no clear link between the existence of R&D consortia and industry competitiveness. Government support of R&D consortia is modest and declining. R&D consortia participants perceive sharing complementary knowledge to be the single most important objective of R&D consortia. There is evidence that R&D consortia work as a complement of private R&D. The perceived benefits of projects are rather intangible, such as researcher training and increased awareness of R&D in general. Opportunistic behavior and spillovers of proprietary technology to participants are not perceived as severe problems in conducting cooperative R&D. The overall subjective evaluation of the typical project's success is modest, and participants do not perceive R&D consortia to be critical to the establishment of their competitive position. (C) 1997 Elsevier Science B.V.