How to balance your technology sourcing portfolio in a developing country

Abstract

Purpose To gain the highest performance in technological efforts, firms have to balance their technology sourcing portfolio, i.e. they have to decide how to source the required technology and whom to source from. This paper aims to tackle the issue by investigating the factors affecting the technology sourcing portfolio composition and the effect of the portfolio diversity on the performance outcome. Design/methodology/approach An inductive multiple case study was performed. Data of four biopharmaceutical producer firms in the period of 1998-2017 were collected. To expand the under study time span, the under study firms were all chosen from the first-comer ones. They entered the NBP arena in the 1998-2008 period, i.e. the period in which Iranian NBP industry was in its formation stage. Findings This paper detects the affecting technology-, firm-, industry- and national level factors in Iran biopharmaceutical industry and analyses their influencing mechanism. It is demonstrated that there are factors in a developing country, specifically Iran, which do not matter in developed countries. In addition, the synergistic effect of using various technology sources vehicles is confirmed. Social implications Inaccessibility to infrastructures and global communication barrier problems are features of Iran innovation system. Such features discourage the foreign firms to make long-term investments in Iran which consequently deprives Iranian firms of their knowledge and technology. The modification of these problems is suggested. Originality/value Factors such as access to infrastructures and global communication barrier are not prevalent in developed countries; therefore, less attention has been paid to them in the literature.