Abstract

This study focuses on the collaboration patterns that small firms
hold with other agents within liberal market economies and
identifies the collaborative drivers that in this context deliver a
superior impact on innovation output measured by product and
process innovations. To explore this research question, the study
combines the literature on innovation systems with a growing
literature on business innovation modes that studies whether
businesses are driven by science and technology factors (STI), or
experience-based factors such as learning-by-doing, by-using and
by-interacting (DUI). In the UK liberal market economy,
universities and research centres are expected to play a critical
role for innovation well beyond the typical impact they produce
in coordinated market economies. This hypothesis is largely
verified through our empirical evidence. Methodologically, this
research is developed through the application of propensity score
matching in the context of the UK longitudinal small business
survey (LSBS) for 2015.