ABSTRACT
Organisations often need to collaborate when they develop ground-breaking technology. Successful innovators have often learned how to form effective alliances across organisations. To set up collaborations, it is important to understand the driving forces and requirements of different types of partners in the innovation ecosystem. Researchers at universities and at institutes have different working conditions and driving forces compared to developers at industries. These different requirements can be understood and taken into consideration during collaboration. There are also limitations for cooperation. EU competitive regulations ban companies from cooperating with an exception for cooperation around developing new technology (technology block exemptions). EU state support rules are described regarding how they influence research cooperation. Taking part in collaborative projects is often a must for companies that need help with external competence and extra funding to develop new technology. Confidentiality agreements are not enough for research collaboration. All collaboration that creates new results should have a project or consortium agreement that handles how new inventions will be owned and how researchers can publish results from the collaboration. This chapter describes the working of this environment. It describes the possibilities and limitations in research contracts and consortium agreements. Such agreements are the basis for being able to control intellectual assets in a collaborative environment.
