On the Failure of R&D Projects

No 15-3, UNCG Economics Working Papers from University of North Carolina at Greensboro, Department of Economics

Abstract: There is an extensive literature on the success/failure of firm-funded R&D projects but growing policy interest focuses on publicly-funded R&D projects. Using data from 1,878 Phase II R&D projects funded through the U.S. Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) program, of which 624 had been discontinued prior to technical completion, we provide for the first time findings on the success/failure of publicly-funded firm-performed R&D projects. We find that prior R&D experience with the technology being funded by SBIR projects, the amount of the SBIR award, and having a female PI, other factors held constant, is negatively related to the probability of project failure. In contrast, firm size is positively associated with project failure. We discuss the implications of these findings for practice, policy, and further research.

Keywords: R&D; project failure; innovation; SBIR; public sector (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: L26 O31 O32 O33 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 23 pages
Date: 2015-02-16
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cse, nep-ent, nep-ino, nep-knm, nep-ppm, nep-sbm and nep-tid
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (6)

Downloads: (external link)
http://bae.uncg.edu/econ/files/2015/02/Link-Working-Paper-15-03.pdf Full text (application/pdf)
Our link check indicates that this URL is bad, the error code is: 404 Not Found

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ris:uncgec:2015_003

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in UNCG Economics Working Papers from University of North Carolina at Greensboro, Department of Economics UNC Greensboro, Department of Economics, PO Box 26170, Bryan Building 462, Greensboro, NC 27402. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Albert Link ().