A partner selection framework for strategic alliances based on project complexity and partner’s past experience

Abstract

In a complex innovative project, an organisation is often not able to manage all aspects alone, due to the lack of all required competencies, skills or resources. Hence, alliance formation can be a solution. To decrease the risk of potential collaboration inefficiency, partner selection happens among firms before collaboration starts. This paper proposes hypotheses based on a systematic literature review. These hypotheses consider the needs of the project and allow to characterise partner selection using a new typology. Finally, a novel framework is proposed to help decision-makers of partner selection in alliance formation. Potentials for future studies are also developed.

Investigating the effects of stakeholder collaboration strategies on risk prevention performance in a digital innovation ecosystem

“…Based on the evaluation index of network status, we further design three collaboration strategies that indicate how to select partners to prevent risk factors. Extant studies on collaboration have mainly focused on the issue of the alternative partners' capabilities and the conflict between different partners (Lv and Qi, 2019), common culture and interorganizational trust (Ding et al, 2013), the partner's collaboration history and technological complexity (Vaez-Alaei et al, 2021), combining divergent knowledge (Pershina et al, 2019), managing organizational boundaries (Urbinati et al, 2021) and so on. These studies have mostly been conducted at the firm level or at the dyadic relationship level and therefore provide limited understanding of collaboration strategies for selecting partners at the network level.…”

“…Consequently, collaboration strategies in a digital innovation ecosystem have been the subject of considerable interest in academia. Various related studies have been conducted to explore the factors influencing collaboration strategies, such as the alternative partners' capabilities and the conflict between different partners (Lv and Qi, 2019), common culture and interorganizational trust (Ding et al, 2013), partner's collaboration history and technological complexity (Vaez-Alaei et al, 2021) and so on. However, these studies established collaboration strategies mainly oriented to the dyadic relationship between partners.…”

Framework for collaborative projects: A partners selection case study

“…A firm's knowledge can be classified into three categories [10], [11]: similarity, complementarity, and coverage. Similarity refers to knowledge known by all partners.…”

“…One of the solutions to overcome these difficulties is to increase the mutual trust between partners. In this paper, we propose a method for selecting partners in complex projects in order to a set of partnerships that can increase the trust between partners and the project success [10]. A case study illustrates the applicability of the proposed method within this research work.…”

How Does Proximity Affect the Dual Innovation of Alliance Partner? The Role of Knowledge Coupling

“…The high failure rate of alliance may be related to poor relationship between alliance partners, mismatch between partner selection, and lack of trust between partners, etc. [5], [6]. The factors restrict the development of firms' technological innovation.…”