Assuring R&D quality across organizations in industry-technology institution joint R&D projects

Summary form only given. Joint R&D projects between industrial firms and technology institutions (TIs) are initiated when a firm faces technological problems for which the TI has no ready solution and both the TI and firm have complementary problem solving capabilities. Such projects involve either sequential or simultaneous TI and firm based R&D, each working independently or together. Quality assurance issues across organizations, regarding product and project implementation, concern project participants at every stage in such projects. However, the literature lacks studies in this interesting and important area. This paper contributes a documentation of the formal and informal project quality assurance modes adopted across organizations within TI-firm joint R&D projects. It also describes the quality mechanisms used for the choice of partners and for structuring project implementation in these projects. The paper draws data from a set of twelve in-depth interview-based project case studies developed by the author during an earlier process study of such projects. These comprehensive cases reflected a range of investment quanta, project sizes, variety of technologies, variety of industrial sectors, differences in TI-firm technology levels, types of R&D, types of firms and types of TIs