How Exogenous Shocks Affect the Evolution of Public-Private Partnerships for R&I: An Analysis of EU R&I Collaborative Healthcare Projects

The study aims to examine the impact of external shocks on the evolution of a specific type of collaborative inter-organizational network (i.e., the Public-Private Partnerships for R&I). In particular, we concentrate on the R&I networks associated with the healthcare sector, which were funded by the EU’s two most recent R&I framework programs: the EU 7th Framework Program and the EU 8th Framework Program, known as Horizon 2020. We investigate the history of dependencies within these networks and how an exogenous shock, such as COVID-19, fosters the evolution of complex R&I networks. By applying network analysis, we observed that the EU R&I healthcare projects show two typical patterns of aggregation under an exogenous shock: (i) strong lock-in effects; and (ii) highly innovative partnerships.