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The purpose of this paper is to focus on evaluating relational capability regarding the configuration of a network of technological partners in Brazilian technology-based firms (TBFs).

The data were collected using an online questionnaire made available to technology-based companies resident in Brazilian Technological Parks. A total of 73 companies responded. The data were analyzed using bivariate and multivariate statistical techniques and were processed using Statistical Package for Social Sciences software. The statistical tests included factor analysis, Cronbach’s α and multiple regression.

The paper shows that the strategic alliance portfolio is influenced by organizational learning, diversity of partners, governance structure, intensity of partnership relations and configuration. In particular, the portfolio of alliances with competence orientation is characterized by tacit knowledge exchanges and learning exploration, homogeneity of partners, informal governance mechanisms, strong bonds of trust and reciprocity with partners and low diversification of actors’ profiles, their attributions and the results obtained in the portfolio. Meanwhile, the characteristics of alliance portfolios with legitimacy orientation include explicit knowledge exchange and learning exploitation, heterogeneity of partners, formal governance mechanisms, weak bonds of trust and reciprocity with partners and high diversification of the profile of the actors, their attributions and the results obtained from the portfolio.

The configuration of the alliance portfolio plays an important role in innovation. To stimulate the creation of new technological skills, the executive of a technology-based company from emerging countries such as China, Russia and India, can configure the portfolio of strategic alliances with more homogeneous partners in terms of profile and attribution. However, if this executive is challenged to seek legitimacy and complementary resources in these markets he can invest in the diversification of the strategic alliance portfolio, prioritizing partners with differentiated profiles and attributions.

The originality of the research lies in the adoption of a complementary and multidimensional theoretical prism, considering the relational capacity of TBFs in the configuration of alliances, both in the intra-firm and portfolio perspective. Furthermore, it was considered that the configuration of alliances can be based on both competence and legitimacy factors.

The purpose of this paper is to examine whether alliance portfolio R&D intensity contributes to biopharmaceutical firms' number of new product approvals and whether alliance portfolio R&D intensity is more positively related to the number of new product approvals for pharmaceutical firms than for biotechnology firms.

The paper employs a random effects Poisson regression model using panel data of 821 firm year observations for 146 biopharmaceutical firms operating in the USA. The robustness of results is also checked with additional analysis, provided in an appendix.

The results of this study show that the R&D intensity of firms' alliance portfolios is positively related to their new product introductions. It is also found that alliance portfolio R&D intensity has a more positive impact on the pharmaceutical segment of the industry's new product introductions than those of the biotechnology segment.

The authors develop and test theory about how the combined effects of two dimensions of alliance portfolio configuration (size and relationship strength) positively impact new product development. The authors propose a two dimensional alliance portfolio configuration measure, alliance portfolio R&D intensity. They combine the number of R&D alliances relative to the total number of alliances in the portfolio with the differential strength of ties associated with resource commitments required to source information from upstream and downstream alliances.

This paper aims to examine the effect of increases in alliance portfolio cultural diversity (IAPCD) on a firm’s performance and how portfolio configuration characteristics moderate this effect, aiming to enable managers to make better partner choice and portfolio configuration decisions to improve performance.

The sample includes 2,326 focal firms from 93 countries that formed 7,616 alliances between the years 1992 and 2006. This study uses generalized method of moments estimation to examine the effects of portfolio changes on next year’s firm sales performance.

Results reveal an inverted-U relationship between IAPCD and firm performance. Data limitations led to examining moderating effects only on the upslope portion of the inverted-U, indicating that an increasing percentage of joint ventures in a firm’s alliance portfolio strengthens IAPCD’s contribution to performance. Further, increased numbers of marketing alliances or research and development alliances and increased percentage of horizontal alliances in an alliance portfolio have a negative moderating effect.

The sample mostly covers large companies. The data indicate that nearly all firms are on the upslope of an inverted-U IAPCD–to–performance relationship, allowing testing of moderating effects pre-inflection point only.

Firms can leverage the additions of culturally diverse partners toward improved performance through astute configuration decisions in alliance portfolio composition.

This paper uses the knowledge-based view to contribute to the alliance portfolio literature. This study asserts that capacity constraints affect firms’ ability to realize performance gains when taking on culturally diverse partners, an effect moderated by portfolio configurations. This paper tests hypothesis with longitudinal data.

To maintain and enhance innovation performance, many firms nowadays look for resources from external sources such as strategic alliances and regional network embeddedness. While considering the important interdependencies among different alliances, research has established an alliance portfolio perspective. From an alliance portfolio perspective, firms can consciously configure the dimensions of their alliance portfolios such as partner characteristics, relational properties, or structural properties. However, within the context of alliance portfolio configuration, the role of regional networks has been largely overlooked. As most high-tech firms are regionally clustered, this is an important research gap. In addressing this gap, this study explores the link between regional network density, alliance portfolio configuration, and its contribution to firm innovation performance. We examine how regional network density and alliance partner diversity influences firm level innovation output. We also investigate the moderating effect of overall network partner status and partner diversity on the link between regional network density and innovation performance. Our empirical evidence is derived from a longitudinal quantitative study of 1,233 German biotechnology firms. We find that regional network density and alliance partner diversity has an inverted U-shape effect on firm level innovation performance. However, overall network status as well as alliance partner diversity negatively moderates the link between regional network density and innovation output. Thus, our study contributes to a better understanding of the link between regional networks, alliance portfolio configuration, and firm level innovation performance.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the forming and configuring of interfirm cooperation in small and medium enterprises (SMEs) characterized by different rates of growth.

The study applies a qualitative approach. A multi-site case study was conducted in 26 Polish ICT firms.

The research indicates that SMEs manage alliances ad hoc and are characterized by a constantly emerging portfolio of partners. The results also indicate that “stable-growth” and “hyper-growth” firms adopt different approaches to managing alliances and they are characterized by different attitude of top managers towards uncertainty.

The results suggest that the managers’ attitude affects the formation and management of alliance portfolio in SMEs. The authors further highlight the importance of managerial agency within the firms and indicate that managers can actively shape the alliance portfolio of their firms.

The paper theoretically contributes to alliance portfolio literature through the adoption of both managerial and structural perspectives. More precisely, this study provides the factors related to managers that might affect a firm’s alliance portfolio configuration. All of these factors relate to managers’ approach to uncertainty. Furthermore, this study extends the previous research through focusing on SMEs.

This study investigates how small firms develop preferences for varying levels of alliance partner diversity by applying a behavioral perspective.

Data were collected via an original survey administered by the Swedish National Bureau of Statistics (SCB) of 1,026 Swedish firms with 50 employees or less. Hypotheses were tested by specifying a series of fractional response regressions.

The results show a U-shaped relationship between experienced and preferred alliance partner diversity in small firms and further show moderating effects of firm age, prior growth and environmental dynamism. The findings suggest that preferences towards diverse alliance portfolios in small firms may arise, not only from well-informed deliberate strategic thinking based on prior experience, but also as a consequence of cognitive bias.

The findings suggest that (1) small firms considering a wide variety of alliance partners should carefully investigate whether they are, in fact, capable of mastering a highly diverse alliance portfolio or if they are overconfident novices. (2) Holders of homogenous alliance portfolios should recurringly investigate whether homogeneity is due to informed strategy or inertia.

This study contributes to the literature on alliance partner diversity and behavioral alliance portfolio configuration by shedding light on the learning mechanisms that shape alliance portfolio strategies of small firms by explicating the complexity of how different experience levels of partner variety affect current alliance portfolio preferences.

The purpose of this paper is to focus on the operation strategy of high-performance alliance portfolios by analyzing the effect of alliance portfolios on the performance of focal firms, using post-structuralism of social network theory and contingency theory. In detail, this paper refines alliance portfolios into three dimensions, and studies the moderating role of context on the relation between alliance portfolios and firm performance.

The empirical study was carried out with second-hand data gathered from Internal Revenue Service. In total, this paper gathered data from 506 focal firms in Zhejiang Province from 2001 to 2010 as the sample to test the hypotheses.

Based on the empirical results, the authors find the positive effect of relational dimension (weak alliance portfolios) and partner dimension (the diversity of partners) on performance. The effect of the former will become weaker with the increasing environmental dynamic, while the effect of the latter will become stronger. However, the structural dimension (alliance portfolios size) and relational dimension (new partners) have the negative effect on performance. And the negative effect will become stronger under high environmental dynamic. Moreover, the negative effect of non-local partners on performance becomes stronger when the environmental dynamic is high.

The paper reveals that with the industry transformation caused by “internet +,” companies have been required go beyond traditional dyadic alliance management perspective. That is to say, individual alliance relationship should be seen as a part of a much broader picture of alliance portfolio. As such, the framework may help companies to manage their alliance portfolios by matching high-performance alliance portfolios to the external environment to produce a synergistic effect (Lea et al., 2006; Tritos et al., 2013; Keith et al., 2014) taking the characteristics of the configuration of alliance portfolios into consideration.

The paper presents a model that explains the effect of three dimensions of alliance portfolios on the performance of focal firms in different contexts through empirical study. This paper also integrates post-structuralism of social network theory and contingency theory to enable the understanding on the configuration of alliance portfolios.

An alliance portfolio can help latecomer firms to acquire the necessary knowledge and resources to catch up with market leaders. However, how latecomer firms construct an alliance portfolio in terms of the nature of windows of opportunity has not been fully analyzed. This paper aims to explore how latecomer firms can build appropriate coalitions according to the nature of the window of opportunity to achieve technological catch-up in different catch-up phases.

Based on a longitudinal case study from 1984 to 2018 of Sunny Group, now a leading manufacturer of integrated optical components and products, this paper explores the process of technological catch-up of latecomer firms building different types of alliance portfolio in different windows of opportunity.

This paper finds that there is a sequence when latecomers build an alliance portfolio in the process of catch-up. When the uncertainty of opportunity increases, the governance mechanism of the alliance portfolio will change from contractual to equity-based. Also, latecomer firms build market-dominated and technology-dominated alliance portfolios to overcome their market and technology disadvantages, respectively.

These conclusions not only enrich the theory of latecomer catch-up from the perspective of windows of opportunity but also expand research on alliance portfolio processes from a temporal perspective.

The purpose of this article is to propose and discuss a systematic theoretical classification of alliance portfolios that allows to elucidate and develop the concept.

The study applies a conceptual approach. A review of the literature was carried out to support the conclusions of this paper.

The results of the classification identify three types of alliance portfolio, according to the level of management that each of them requires: additive, strategic and managed and strategic. These portfolio typologies are analyzed in an evolutionary perspective.

This article is of interest to managers as it emphasizes the management of the alliance portfolio, highlighting the elements or characteristics that determine the transition from one type of portfolio to another.

This paper contributes to the consolidation and reorientation of the extensive research into alliance portfolios and proposes a systematic classification that can help to interpret the results of research and guide future studies.

Theory predicts that balancing exploratory and exploitative learning (i.e., ambidexterity) across alliance portfolio domains (e.g. value chain function, governance modes) increases firm performance, whereas balance within domains decreases performance. Prior empirical work, however, only assessed balance/imbalance within and across two domains. The purpose of this study is to determine if theory generalizes beyond specific domain combinations. The authors investigated across multiple domains to determine whether alliance portfolios should be imbalanced toward exploration or exploitation within domains or balanced across domains. The authors also extended prior research by exploring whether the direction of imbalance matters. Current theory only advises managers to accept imbalance without helping with the choice between exploration and exploitation.

Hypotheses are tested using fixed-effects generalized least squares (GLS) regression analysis of a large 13-year panel sample of Fortune 500 firms from 1996 to 2008.

With respect to the balance between exploration and exploitation within each of the five domains investigated, imbalanced alliance portfolios had higher firm performance. No evidence was found that balance across domains relates to performance. Instead, for four of the five domains, imbalance toward exploration related positively to firm performance.

An alliance portfolio that allows for exploration in some domains and exploitation in other domains appears more difficult to implement than prior theory suggests. Firms benefit mostly from using the alliance portfolio for exploratory learning.