Unpacking Functional Alliance Portfolios: How Signals of Viability Affect Young Firms’ Outcomes

The double-edged sword of technological diversity in R&D alliances: Network position and learning speed as moderators

“…Moreover, the use of the SDC database is not without limitations. Although the SDC database has been generally regarded as the most comprehensive database and widely used in a number of empirical research on alliances and inter-firm networks (e.g., Diestre & Rajagopalan, 2012;Lin et al, 2009;Oxley & Sampson, 2004;Sampson, 2007), it is still far from perfect (Hoehn-Weiss & Karim, 2014). Future research can replicate and extend this study by applying and combining different databases, such as Securities and Exchange Commission's EDGAR database, Thomson Reuters's Recap and BIOSCAN.…”

Corporate venture capital portfolios and firm innovation

“…We add to the emerging body of work that emphasizes the importance of portfolios of relationships and examines the effect of portfolio diversity on firm innovative performance (Goerzen and Beamish, 2005;Hoehn-Weiss and Karim, 2013;Jiang et al, 2010;Mouri et al, 2012;Sarkar et al, 2009;Van de Vrande, 2013;Vassolo et al, 2004;Vasudeva and Anand, 2011). Most research that has examined the influence of interorganizational portfolio diversity on firm performance only considers the differences among a firm's partners and not their dissimilarity with the focal firm (Goerzen and Beamish, 2005;Hoehn-Weiss and Karim, 2013;Jiang et al, 2010;Van de Vrande, 2013). In contrast, using a network based measure of diversity, we studied the dissimilarities between a firm and its partners and among the partners in the portfolio.…”

Flow Signals: Evidence from Patent and Alliance Portfolios in the US Biopharmaceutical Industry

“…Over time the signals sent by the characteristics of patent and alliance portfolios reflect a pattern of behaviour forming expectations of a firm's capabilities and intentions to which market observers pay close attention when evaluating a firm's likelihood to create value (Madhavan and Prescott, 1995;Nesta and Saviotti, 2006;Ozcan and Overby, 2008). These so-called flow signals -multiple point signals over time - (DeKinder and Kohli, 2008), in particular, the compositional diversity of patent and alliance portfolio, have significant signalling power and performance consequences whether they were sent intentionally or not (Hoehn-Weiss and Karim, 2014;Wuyts and Dutta, 2014).…”

“…We theorize that while diversity in temporally sequenced patent and alliance portfolios sends contrasting flow signals, market observers are able to discern an overall assessment as to their value conditioned on the cognitive demands and proximity involved in interpreting portfolio flow signals (Kahneman, 2011;Zuckerman, 1999). Understanding these relationships is important as it raises managers' attention to the signalling power of portfolio diversity, how it is evaluated by market observers and provides an explanation of how the market assesses heterogeneity among firms' resources and capabilities (Hoehn-Weiss and Karim, 2014;Ozcan and Overby, 2008). Thus, a significant aspect of managing patent and alliance portfolios is communicating their strategic intent (Skaggs and Snow, 2004) since we know that market observers form perception of the value of firm action (Madhavan and Prescott, 1995) that become sticky (Benner and Ranganathan, 2013).…”

“…Signalling research has also focused on signal bundling -the simultaneous occurrence of multiple events (e.g., Hoehn-Weiss and Karim, 2014;Janney and Folta, 2003) -while questions regarding the temporal sequencing of signalling is under-researched. Given that patents are often antecedents to alliance formation (Colombo et al, 2006;Zhang et al, 2007) it is reasonable to assume that patents, alliances and their portfolios are temporally sequenced.…”