Research and development (R&D) collaboration helps the firms to deal with the variety increase of customers’ variable needs, increased competition, and rapid growth rate of scientific and technological innovation of products. Along with the advent of concepts such as globalization and open innovation, this collaboration has paved the way to remove firms’ limitations, improve innovation capabilities, and increase firms’ accessibility to new markets. Although, R&D collaboration has positive effects on firms’ innovation, but there are ambiguities about its nature and how. By enumerating the reasons of their formation, this paper attempts to clarify the main objective of accessing the technology and new markets in order to increase the productivity in innovation process. Also, to make clear the types, structure, style, and process of R&D collaboration by reviewing the present studies.
