Trends in International Collaborative Agreements

The INSEAD Business School (Fontainebleau, France) began creating a database in the mid-1970s on international collaborative agreements. As of mid-1986, some 839 agreements had been compiled from public announcements of agreements reported in The Economist and The Financial Times for the period 1975-1986. A collaborative agreement was defined as a connection between firms to jointly pursue a common objective. Attributes characterizing these agreements included: 1. shared responsibility, 2. maintenance of individual identities, 3. continual transfer of partners' resources, and 4. indivisibility of project. Strategic advantages and economic necessity have combined to make collaboration a dominant international marketplace pattern. The data showed that agreements were most likely to occur between large corporations that were already multinational, with the majority taking place between partners within the European Economic Community or between US and European companies. The majority of agreements were formed to engage in joint product development, and most were between 2 partners.