Leveraging knowledge, learning, and innovation in forming strategic government-university-industry (GUI) R&D partnerships in the US, Germany, and France

The linkage between theory on knowledge management and strategic management provides a framework for understanding the imperative for collaborative re search partnerships, particularly those involving government, university an d industry actors. The emergence of collaboration is facilitated by the sha ring of knowledge across organizational boundaries, which promotes the form ation of trusted relationships and builds social capital for further cooper ation. Furthermore, these partnerships are a vehicle for accelerating organ izational learning and for coordinating trans-organizational "communities o f innovation". Understanding the nature, process, and content of such colla borative research and technological development ventures can endow with str ategic insights both the government policy making and the corporate strateg y crafting that informs, shapes, and evolves such partnerships. in particul ar, government and industry can learn from past experience on how to design intelligent trans-organizational knowledge interfaces to ensure that knowl edge sharing occurs across organizational boundaries. A cross-sectional ana lysis of representative cases of GUIs from the US, Germany, and France, yie lds a preliminary list of key considerations and corresponding strategic ma nagement skills which firms must develop to participate in win-win-win GUI alliances. (C) 2000 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.