From Invention Success to Commercialization Success: Technology Ventures and the Benefits of Upstream and Downstream Supply-Chain Alliances

Abstract

An entrepreneurial venture's supply‐chain partnerships involve upstream alliances (with research universities) and downstream alliances (with large industry incumbents). Even though such partnerships bring the venture many benefits, they also come with significant challenges, notably the need to seamlessly combine a “technology push” philosophy with a “market pull” one. Utilizing a data set of over both upstream and downstream alliance partnerships spanning 603 technology ventures in the biotech industry, interesting results were found with regard to the impact of these two alliance partnerships on the venture's invention success and commercialization success. Upstream partnerships demonstrate a positive impact on invention success but no significant impact on commercialization success. However, with the moderating role of downstream partnerships, the results change: the joint effect of these two types of alliance partnerships is positive for both invention and commercialization success. The study findings have important implications with regard to the role and impact of alliance partnerships at the intersection of small business, entrepreneurship and technology innovation, and for researchers, practitioners, and policy makers.

Alliances in Financial Ecosystems: A Source of Organizational Legitimacy for Fintech Startups and Incumbents

“…A strategic alliance is an inter-organizational cooperation that enables the building of competitive advantages. Given that engaging in alliances is often integral to technology startups achieving competitive advantage (Dutta & Hora, 2017), being perceived as an attractive partner is an important part of growing a startup. Such alliances provide, for example, customer knowledge and distribution channels (Aarikka-Stenroos & Sandberg, 2012).…”

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“…From the intersecting viewpoint of entrepreneurship, we know that founder characteristics and the new venture's team composition have an influence on the identification of an idea and its exploitation as an opportunity (Klotz, et al, 2013;Unger et al, 2011). We also know the ways in which the business model (Foss & Saebi, 2017), the firm's strategy (Gans et al, 2018), the strategic orientation and learning (Dutta & Crossan, 2005;Dutta & Hora, 2017), and the ecosystem where they are embedded (Drori & Wright, 2018;Kohler, 2016;Mian et al, 2016), can make a difference. Finally, we also know that there are overarching institutional, network, and societal elements that can have an impact on technology entrepreneurship activities, for instance, the regulation approaches (Gurses & Ozcan, 2015) or regional innovation policy choices (Clayton et al, 2018;Sorenson, 2018).…”

Editorial: Technology Commercialization and Entrepreneurship (January 2019)

“…From the intersecting viewpoint of entrepreneurship, we know that founder characteristics and the new venture's team composition have an influence on the identification of an idea and its exploitation as an opportunity (Klotz, et al, 2013;Unger et al, 2011). We also know the ways in which the business model (Foss & Saebi, 2017), the firm's strategy (Gans et al, 2018), the strategic orientation and learning (Dutta & Crossan, 2005;Dutta & Hora, 2017), and the ecosystem where they are embedded (Drori & Wright, 2018;Kohler, 2016;Mian et al, 2016), can make a difference. Finally, we also know that there are overarching institutional, network, and societal elements that can have an impact on technology entrepreneurship activities, for instance, the regulation approaches (Gurses & Ozcan, 2015) or regional innovation policy choices (Clayton et al, 2018;Sorenson, 2018).…”