Rich-get-richer : competitive funding and academic-industry collaboration

This study embarks on an in-depth analysis of cross-country policy dynamics over the past three decades, with a specific emphasis on the support for academic-industry collaboration versus sole academic or industry funding. Drawing insights from comprehensive datasets and policy trends, our research illuminates the evolving landscape of research funding and collaboration policies. We examine funding by Innosuisse (Swiss Innovation Project Funding) and SBIR (US Small Business Innovation Research), exploring the rates of future grant success for both academic and industry partners. We find strong evidence of rich-get-richer phenomenon in the Innosuisse program for both academic and industry partners. For SBIR we find weaker levels of continued funding to the same partners with most attaining at most a few grants. It is worth considering additional efforts to ensure that novel ideas are supported and that the same partners are not receiving funding time and again to the exclusion of others.