Abstract
AbstractOur research extends the current knowledge based view on the configuration of alliance portfolios and their deployment in different external knowledge environments. We study these alliance portfolios in a longitudinal sample (1996–2010) for over three thousand firms that operate in a large number of industries in the Netherlands. Our findings indicate that partner type variety and partner type relevance, as different dimensions of partner diversity in alliance portfolios, both have an inverted U‐shaped association with firm innovation performance. However, alliance portfolios characterized by both high partner type variety and high relevance cause inferior innovation performance. Different external knowledge environments, characterized by different levels of industry modularity and scope of knowledge distribution, moderate the inverted U‐shaped associations of partner type variety and relevance in alliance portfolios with firm innovation performance in opposing directions. While for partner type variety, a high level is found to be optimal in environments with greater modularity or broader scope of knowledge distribution, for partner type relevance it turns out that a low level is optimal under more modular industry conditions.
Highlights
Scholars studying firm alliances increasingly argue that corporate objectives such as the spurring of innovation are not achieved through the success of one particular alliance but through the joint effect of the overall portfolio of collaborations (e.g., Lavie, 2007; VC 2017 The Authors Journal of Management Studies published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd and Society for the Advancement of Management StudiesWassmer, 2010)
Given the increasing number of actors that are participating in a more distributed innovation process (e.g. Faems et al, 2010; Laursen and Salter, 2006), we focus on partner type diversity as an important type of alliance portfolio diversity
While the knowledge-based view (KBV) has focused on modularity of internal organizational resources and their effects on knowledge integration, we extend this perspective and examine empirically how the modularity of external knowledge influences the relationships between partner type diversity of alliance portfolios and innovation performance
Summary
VC 2017 The Authors Journal of Management Studies published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd and Society for the Advancement of Management Studies. The former is computed as a Blau index of the industryaverage scores on importance for innovation of customers, suppliers, competitors, universities and research centres. Time-varying firm-level and industry-level variables are lagged one period to alleviate endogeneity problems
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