Knowledge acquisition and complementary specialization in alliances: The impact of technological overlap and alliance experience

Abstract

While alliances are widely acknowledged to facilitate knowledge transfers across firms, alliances also allow partnering firms to combine technological capabilities toward joint innovation outcomes through complementary specialization. We examine how technological overlap and alliance experience – widely recognized antecedents of external knowledge utilization – influence the extent of knowledge acquisition and complementary specialization in alliances. Our analyses of 841 two-partner technology alliances within the ICT industry indicate that alliances between firms with moderate-to-high degrees of technological overlap favor high levels of knowledge acquisition across partnering firms while alliances among firms sharing either low or high levels of technological overlap are well-suited for complementary specialization. We further find that partnering firms’ prior experiences with a diverse range of alliance partners strengthen these relationships. Our results also suggest that the likelihood of an alliance to simultaneously exhibit knowledge acquisition and complementary specialization improves as partnering firms’ technological overlap and alliance experience increase.