A community of companies, mostly SMEs, represented by a body such as a trade association, research club, sectoral/branch institute etc. takes a key role in planning, performing and, generally, paying for research work.
A further defining feature is that knowledge transfer is an integral part of Collective Research, i.e. ensuring the results of research are spread throughout the target community of companies, through dissemination, training, etc. It is worth emphasising, too, that many Collective Research organisations have an important role in standards setting, testing and certification work for their target community.
Collective Research is distinct from other forms of enterprise R&D, which may generally be classified as:
- "corporate": R&D performed by a company for its own benefit
- "collaborative" or "cooperative": R&D performed by several companies on a shared cost basis for their own inidividual benefit
- or "contract": R&D contracted by one or several companies from one or several third-party research performers, again to the individual benefit of the contracting company or companies