The Evaluation of 'Behavioural Additionality' - IWT

CHAPTER 2 > Measuring Additionality of R&D Subsidies with Surveys:
Towards an Evaluation Methodology for IWT-Flanders
different strategic drivers, which these companies
have. Technology is considered to be
an enabler in function of the core strategy.
As such, permanent investments in R&D usually
take the form of quality control and very
few slack time remains in the company to
devote to new product development or “out
of the box” thinking.
Also the amount of output additionality of
the subsidized project stays quite low. Since
company performance is only slightly
affected by its R&D results, direct output
additionality is difficult if not impossible to
trace back.
In both cases, the R&D grant was a result of
a partnership. It seems that for this group
collective R&D programmes are quite important.
Further, R&D subsidies are quite limited
to technology development. However,
because these companies rather use
enabling technologies to improve their
products instead of developing technologies
themselves, it means that public R&D support
could be more oriented towards technology
watch and joint technology scouting
activities. Often the absorptive capacity in
these firms is lacking to recognize and adopt
new technological changes from supplying
industries such as for instance the packaging
industry for food processing or from client
industries such as the high speed trains for
enriched steel cables.
6.3. GROUP 3: LARGE R&D INTENSIVE
COMPANIES
6.3.1. Selection of cases
In the group of large R&D intensive companies,
we chose 3 cases in this exploratory
phase to explore into more depth. The cases
were chosen to differ in terms of sector,
holding structure and amount of subsidies
received. Case 1 was a biotech company
founded in the early eighties. Being a high
tech start-up and a spin-out from a university
department, it was a remarkable company.
It was one of the few companies in
Belgium that succeeded then to obtain a significant
amount of venture capital. In 1995,
the company was introduced on NASDAQ
and boosted in terms of employees. Today, it
counts about 550 employees worldwide and
is active in the field of theragnostics. It has
received a substantial amount of subsidies
since the inception of the IWT in 1991. Case
2 is a software company founded in the seventies.
Although it was founded as a spinout
of a local university, it did not stay independent
for a long time. It was taken over
by a Flemish multinational in the mid-eighties.
It was taken over by an electronics company,
while being a software company. It
grew to over 500 employees, but a couple of
years ago the company was split. Part of it
was sold to a Danish multinational. In total,
the company received over 5 mio Euro of
subsidies in R&D since 1991.
6.3.2. Research Design
For this group of companies, the research
design involved a three step approach.
Step One. First, we contacted the responsible
IWT officials that dealt with the particular
company. They have excellent – privileged
witness – information about the
project and the company. The projects were
overlooked with each of these officials and
the most interesting ones were discussed in
greater detail for further analysis. This step
is similar to step 1 followed in the previous
two groups.
Step Two. In a second step, we personally
visited the R&D manager of the company for
the in-take interview. The main goal of this
interview was to disentangle the innovation
process and analyse at which stage in this
process, subsidies were claimed. Rather than
focusing on one particular project, we discussed
the portfolio of projects with these
people.
In order to structure this in-take interview we
used a customized version of the questionnaire
presented above. In short, the first
three parts of the questionnaire remain
about the same. These parts (see also figure
3) relate to the general information about
the firm, its competitive market position, its
R&D budget and its business and innovation
strategy. Part 4 of the in-take questionnaire
is different from the core questionnaire discussed
above and deals with the innovation
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