The nature of collaborative innovative activities

We investigate the determinants of governance for a sample of successful collaborative inventive activities. We find that firm size and incoming spillovers have a positive impact on the probability to co-operate. We then extend the analysis to four possible modes of governance: co- assignment, co-invention, formal agreement, and informal agreement. We find that higher project complexity and technological scope are associated to tighter modes of governance while licensing to less hierarchical ones. Inventor specific characteristics matter too. In particular, experience increases the probability of choosing less hierarchical governance modes while better education is associated to tighter modes.