Value Creation through Strategic Alliances: The Importance of the Characteristics of the Partners and the Resources Brought by Them

Abstract

The joint creation of value, the accumulation and reconfiguration of resources and the development of new resources are critical factors in the formation of strategic alliances. Many authors investigated the role of resource exchange and types of partners in alliance performance. This paper is an explanatory study that presents a framework to describe the potential value creation in alliances. This framework focuses on the value added in alliances according to the congruence of partners' profiles and the nature of resources brought by them. First, we present the alliance motives and the benefits mentioned in the literature. The motives of alliances are important because they affect the resources contributed in alliances and decision making in partner selection. Then we examine the researches which have studied value creation according to the nature of resources brought by the partners and/or the origin of the partners in strategic alliances. Finally, we present an integrated framework that considers these two factors together to explain the desirable value created through strategic alliances. In this paper we attempt to bring the main findings of past researches together and to analyze them, in order to clarify better the different options to gain more value through alliance formation.