The role of diversification profiles and dyadic characteristics in the formation of technological alliances: Differences between exploitation and exploration in a low-tech industry

Abstract

This paper posits that corporate and technological diversification of firms and their relatedness in terms of products and technologies will impact their propensity to form technological alliances. It argues that both higher levels of diversification and greater relatedness signal superior capabilities and available resources to prospective partners that will facilitate exploration and exploitation of technological assets in an alliance.These theoretical conjectures are tested using a dataset of all tire producers worldwide between 1985 and 1996 that combines detailed firm data on establishment, patenting, and alliance activities. The results indicate that complementarity in terms of corporate and technological diversification strategies, as well as partner characteristics (e.g., size, age, and technological capabilities) drive exploitation alliances. Moreover, firms with similar product portfolios are more likely to engage in exploitative interactions.In contrast, exploration alliances exhibit strong partner similarity across all firm characteristics. Both corporate and technological diversification have positive effects on firms' propensity to engage in exploration, while technological distance has a negative nonlinear one.

Technological Diversification: A Systematic Review of Antecedents, Outcomes and Moderating Effects

“…There is much research in the field on the role of inter‐organizational relationships (Cantwell and Santangelo ; Krammer ; Quintana‐García and Benavides‐Velasco ). But future studies need to push further.…”

“…Research has therefore found that technological diversification has a positive association with entry into strategic alliances (Zhang et al . ), in particular explorative (for example R&D‐based) alliances (Krammer ). In the same study, Krammer found that exploitative (e.g.…”

“…A firm's technological resources and capabilities are central to its competitive success (Barney 2001;Nason and Wiklund 2015;Peteraf 1993;Ray et al 2004). Consequently, many firms have expanded their technology base by becoming active in multiple technological fields (Breschi et al 2003;Fai 2003;Kim et al 2016;Krammer 2016;Mendonca 2009). They differ, though, in the level of this technological diversification.…”

Science, technology, and innovation for economic competitiveness: The role of smart specialization in less-developed countries

“…Therefore, when analyzing the impact of innovation on economic competitiveness one must carefully account for systemic and industrial particularities that affect the creation, diffusion and exploitation of knowledge among different actors in these innovation systems (Todtling and Trippl, 2005;Krammer 2016). …”

“…These environments provide a far-less-than-ideal setting for implementing SS by suffering from low entrepreneurship rates (Carre and Thurik, 2008), weak systems of innovation (Krammer, 2009), limited technological opportunities (Krammer, 2016), significant institutional heterogeneity (Krammer, 2015a), lack of significant regional autonomy (Charles et al, 2012) and market-driven clusters (Bröchler and Kalentzis, 2017). Together, all these issues raise significant concerns regarding the successful implementation of SS strategies for such "laggard" regions or countries, particularly when targeting techno-economic development (Phillips et al, 2016).…”