Collaborative research as a function of proximity, industry, and company: a case study of an R&D consortium

Collaborative work among researchers at US Universities, industry, and federal laboratories is increasingly advocated in the globally competitive marketplace. Reliable and meaningful measures of such collaboration have been sparse. This study uses a bibliographic search of published, co-authored research papers to analyze collaboration patterns among researchers at one of the nation´s oldest, largest, and most complex R&D consortia, the Microelectronics and Computer Technology Corporation (MCC) and its shareholders, other industry participants, universities, and federal laboratories. The data indicate that, in terms of a defined population of published research articles, MCC researchers have collaborated more frequently with academic than with corporate researchers and more often with nonshareholder than shareholder organizations. MCC is located in Austin, Texas. Geographic proximity has played a role in the consortium´s collaboration with universities only for the local research university, The University of Texas at Austin. Proximity has not been an important factor in corporate collaboration, with the consortium. Among MCC shareholders, collaboration has varied by type of industry, while universities have played an important linking role between MCC and industry. R&D expenditures per employee for member companies are inversely related to the frequency of co-authorship of articles with MCC researchers. Collaboration of MCC shareholders with international researchers has been fairly frequent, given that MCC is closed to foreign membership