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Co-operative Behaviour of Innovative Firms in Austria, 1998

As an Austrian contribution to the focus group on "Innovation and inter-firm co-operation" within the OECD National Innovation Systems (NIS) Project, this tip study reports the major results of a survey on innovation and co-operation covering about 1.000 Austrian manufacturing firms. The main objective of the survey was to provide a better understanding of the role of inter-organizational co-operation in the process of product innovation. In addition, the report touches on a number of issues which have occurred in the literature, focusing in particular on the fact that innovation cannot be be properly understood as the result of activities of isolated firms, but rather depends on how firms benefit from the knowledge of other firms and institutions in the innovation process.