Strategic partnerships in Canadian advanced materials

The analysis of technical (R&D) collaborations in Canadian advanced materials industries show strong interactions between producers, users, government laboratories and universities. Management patterns show the predominance of flexible governance structures: long-term agreements instead of joint ventures, two-member partnerships, and collective management. Most of the alliances involve two or three partners, usually a producer, a user and/or a university or government laboratory. Advantages (gaining complementary assets, accelerated innovation, financing and R&D economies of scale among others) outnumber difficulties, thus bringing some evidence against the usefulness of the transaction cost approach to the study of technical alliances in advanced materials. The vast majority of the partnerships were entirely domestic (i.e. did not include foreign partners). The study was conducted on a sample of 30 Canadian private firms (both producers and users) and 6 government corporations and public research laboratories.