Designing alliance networks: the influence of network position, environmental change, and strategy on firm performance

Abstract

Alliance networks are strategic decisions involving trade‐offs between two stylized structural design choices: prominent and entrepreneurial. Prominent alliance networks emphasize benefits arising out of multiple access and affiliation to other prominent firms in the network. An entrepreneurial position, on the other hand, emphasizes brokerage and diversity benefits arising out of access to nonredundant and diverse information. We demonstrate that the performance benefits of each type of alliance network are contingent on environmental change and strategy, and are thus time dependent. Following an environmental change event in the steel industry, alliance networks that were more entrepreneurial performed better, while those that were more prominent suffered performance decline. However, when the change was radical, both types of alliance networks were negatively related to performance. We suggest that following a radical change, industry alliance networks may not have the requisite information necessary for quick and effective strategic responses. Firms pursuing an analyzer strategy performed better when emphasizing a prominent, and to a lesser extent, entrepreneurial alliance network. However, firms that develop an alliance network high on both prominent and entrepreneurial structural positions had lower relative performance. Our results indicate the need for managers to assess their alliance portfolio over time and redesign it based on environmental and strategic contingencies. Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Learning horizon and optimal alliance formation

“…One key implication of Proposition 2 is that in a low tech industry the optimal number of direct alliance partners is instead greater for firms with a more extensive learning horizon. Consistent with this implication, Koka and Prescott (2008) show that in the low tech steel industry during 1980-1994, firms that simultaneously had greater numbers of direct as well as indirect partners outperformed others, and this effect was even more pronounced during periods of environmental stability.…”

Innovation Outcomes and Partner-Type Selection in R&D Alliances: The Role of Simultaneous Diversification and Sequential Adaptation

“…Finding an optimal interplay between internal and external searches represents a fundamental facet of innovation theory and constitutes a crucial managerial task (Koka & Prescott, 2008;Laursen & Salter, 2014;Levinthal & March, 1993;Li & Rowley, 2002;Parmigiani & Mitchell, 2009;Rivkin, 2000;Teece et al, 1997).…”

“…Some scholars note that if we ignore sequential adaptation, the extent of the complementarity effects between collaboration partner types will not be fully taken into account (Battisti, Colombo, & Rabbiosi, 2014;Jovanovic & Stolyarov, 2000;Smith, 2005). Our approach accounts at least partly for the dynamics within R&D alliances and contributes to the reasoning on how routines and path-dependent behavior in firms' knowledge sourcing strategies is related to innovation outcomes in changing external environments (Koka & Prescott, 2008;Li & Rowley, 2002).…”

Governança tecnológica e cooperabilidade nas multinacionais brasileiras

“…Nesse sentido, há um consenso, na literatura, sobre os elementos que podem determinar a coordenação, a integração global das subsidiárias e a cooperação das multinacionais com fontes externas de inovação, sendo eles: a transferência de ativos do conhecimento, o papel da subsidiária (Cantwell & Mudambi, 2005) e a autonomia da subsidiária (Birkinshaw, Hood & Young, 2005 (Lavie & Miller, 2008); as características relacionais, envolvendo a intensidade dos laços estabelecidos nas parcerias (Capaldo, 2007;Dyer, Singh & Kale, 2008;Koka & Prescott, 2008;Tiwana, 2008), o propósito e a convergência estratégica das parcerias, pois eles favorecem a criação de vín-culos econômicos e institucionais entre os atores e promovem o desenvolvimento de práticas institucionais comuns, que são importantes para gerar atividades de inovação e conhecimento de ponta (Abramovsky, Harrison & Simpson, 2007;Brosrtröm, 2010;D'Este & Iammarino, 2010 (Kim & Song, 2007;Schreiner, Kale & Corsten, 2009;Tomlinson, 2010).…”

“…• A coordenação do portfólio de parcerias focadas em inovação (Schilke & Goerzen, 2010;Wassmer, 2010) para alavancar a interdependência entre as parcerias individuais de uma empresa; evitar ações duplicadas (Goerzen, 2007;Koka & Prescott, 2008); criar uma base de experiência mais substancial para acelerar o aprendizado sobre como projetar e gerenciar parcerias focadas em inovação; acessar simultaneamente uma ampla gama de recursos de parceiros diferentes como um meio eficaz para melhorar o estoque de recursos e capacidades (Bruneel, Este & Salter, 2010;Hoffmann, 2007;) e para ampliar as possibilidades de formação de parcerias adicionais (Goerzen, 2007;Raisch & Birkinshaw, 2008;Yamakawa, Yang & John, 2011). …”