Abstract:
Using patent data, a new quantitative analytical method combines several variables deriving from social network analysis with context features and economic metrics, in order to define the relationships between collaborative activities and firms’ characteristics. Specifically, this paper exploits centrality indices and brokerage roles provided by social network analysis for detecting firms’ position within the system of relationships, evaluating its correlation with age, dimension and economic results, such as revenues, R&D expenditure and profits. The framework is applied to a sample of 192 top R&D spending companies belonging to the technology hardware & equipment industry. Joint patenting activities filed from 2005 to 2011 involving firms within the sample are employed for extracting dyadic and triadic collaborations through which we build the network. Our findings show the impact of specific collaborative strategies on firms’ economic results and explain why companies enter into joint development agreements with partners belonging to the system of relationships, confirming that social network analysis is an effective instrument for evaluating business networks.
