Analysis of two public-private collaborative R & D support schemes

In 2005, two mechanisms were set up to support collaborative research and development (R & D) between companies and research organizations. One carried by the National Research Agency (ANR) subsidizes projects that are more oriented towards basic research. The other supported by the Interministerial Fund (FUI) supports R & D activities that are more applied. This study presents a first exploitation of a database concerning these two schemes over the 2007-2014 period. This analysis allows to describe the selected projects, to examine the determinant of the participation of companies, and to investigate the decision of the two organizations to finance or not a project.

This work confirms that the ANR and FUI mechanisms pursued different objectives: on average, the projects supported by the ANR are smaller than those supported by the FUI, they involve relatively more public research organizations, and R & D spending per partner is almost three times lower. In addition, in line with the policy of the competitiveness clusters (‘‘Pôles de Compétitivité’’), the FUI program seems to have favored more projects involving partners of the same territory whereas the ANR has more financed distant collaborations and projects with partners located in Ile-de-France.

However, the selection process decreases the difference between the two devices: the ANR selects rather large projects, while the FUI rather retains those granting more to research organizations. In addition, the two schemes are aimed at the same very specific population of companies: companies that are already innovative, that carry out more R & D than others, that are more frequently members of a competitiveness cluster, and that have a better knowledge of the public support system for innovation. This last point raises the question of the redundancy of the other devices supporting collaborative R & D created in 2010, which are addressed in principle to the same population of companies.