ABSTRACT
The development of altogether new products, as opposed to simple product differentiation, is very often made possible through the incorporation of "new" scientific knowledge and "new" techniques into the design of existing products. Not every new technology requires cooperative effort, but the firms in this industry in Japan found that cooperative research was occurring frequently enough that the choice of a research partner became an important issue. Informal research partnerships have tended to develop over time between firms in different industries. Most cases of cooperation for the development of specific new products and simple systems were initiated by a single firm. The procedures for carrying out inter-industry cooperation for the development of "complex" systems were somewhat different from the case of individual new products or simple systems, although there was a considerable amount of overlap and the distinction between these was not always an easy one to make.
