Competitive funding and academic-industry collaboration: policy trends and insights

In an era of globalized research endeavors, the interplay between government funding programs, funding decisions, and their influence on successful research collaborations and grant application success rates has emerged as a critical focus of inquiry. This study embarks on an in-depth analysis of cross-country funding dynamics over the past three decades, with a specific emphasis on 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 partners and industry partners in terms of winning future grants. For SBIR we find weaker levels of continued funding to the same partners with most attaining at most a few grants. With the increasing prevalence of academic-industry collaborations among both funders, it is worth considering additional efforts to ensure that novel ideas and new individuals and teams are supported.