Policy-driven collaborative research networks in Europe

Abstract

This paper examines the nature and structure of particular types of networks, i.e. policy-driven collaborative research networks. More specifically, it analyses the emerging networks formed under the fourth, fifth, and sixth EU Framework Programmes in the area of Information Society Technologies. This considerable time-span of roughly 12 years allows for comprehensive monitoring of these networks’ evolution. Four sets of results with significant policy implications arise: (a) the networks analysed display characteristics of complex networks such as small-world property and scale-free distributions, (b) the networks examined are structured around a core of organizations, mainly universities and research institutes which have assumed a very influential role over time, (c) the introduction of new instruments in FP6 has considerably increased interconnectivity compared with the previous FPs, thus contributing to the implementation of the European Research Area initiative. In addition, another set of targeted instruments for upgrading the strategic position – within the networks – of promising peripheral actors should be designed.

Keywords:

• European Framework Programmes
• research joint ventures
• R&D networks
• information society technologies
• social network analysis

JEL Classification :

• O33
• O38
• L14

Acknowledgements

We acknowledge the partial financial support from the Research Programme Pythagoras II which was co-funded by the European Social Fund (75%) and National resources (25%) in the context of the Operational Programme for Education and Initial Vocational Training. Earlier versions of this article were presented at the EAEPE 2007 Conference and the DIME 2007 Conference on ‘Distributed Networks and the Knowledge-based Economy’. We would like to thank the participants for their comments. We would also like to thank two anonymous referees for their valuable comments.

Notes

The relative probability of new links which represents the y-axis in Figure 5 is calculated by the ratio between the proportion of new links added to organizations with k previous links, and the proportion of actors with k previous links on all the organizations present in the network just before the addition of the link (Breschi and Cusmano 2004).

These two subgroups were chosen arbitrarily. However, their removal from the IST networks resulted in a significant drop of their giant component initial size and in addition, both groups accounted for a significant fraction of the total networks’ ties. We used different values to the two adopted to check for robustness and the main results remained unaffected.