Collaborative research partnerships between companies and research organisations can take on a wide variety of forms. Partners work together to advance scientific knowledge – it is an equal partnership between entities who are pursuing mutually interesting and beneficial research. It is often supported by outside financing – actually, mostly such a project can be supported by subsidies from the state budget and public funds.
Main features of collaborative research:
• The company and the research organization are partners
• They solve the project together
• They share results (at least one)
• They share risks
• Results are always shared (even if non-public sources were uploaded only by the company)
In the European Union, it is regulated by Article 3.2.2 of the EU “R&D&I Framework” (Framework for State Aid for Research and Development and Innovation 2014/C 198/01). The current regulation sets out exhaustive conditions under which indirect support to the company is not provided through the research organization.