Exploration, exploitation, and firm age in alliance portfolios

• Published in: Eurasian business review Vol. 9; no. 4; pp. 387 - 406
• Main Authors: Guisado-González, Manuel, González-Blanco, Jennifer, Coca-Pérez, José Luis
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Cham Springer International Publishing 01-12-2019; Springer Nature B.V
• Subjects: Alliances; Business and Management; Economic models; Emerging Markets/Globalization; Entrepreneurship; Innovation/Technology Management; Regular Article; Firm age; C12; D24; Complementarity approach; Exploration; Alliances; Exploitation; L24; O32
• ISSN: 1309-4297; 2147-4281
• DOI: 10.1007/s40821-019-00131-y

We analyzed the relationship between exploration-oriented and exploration-oriented alliances. Through the complementarity approach, three possible relationships were analyzed: complementarity, substitutability, and no relationship. We use Technological Innovation Panel data for Spanish manufacturing firms for 2005–2013. The econometric technique that we used to estimate the coefficients was population-averaged OLS. Our findings suggest that alliance portfolios formed by exploration-oriented and exploration-oriented alliances achieve worse innovation performance than specialized exploration or exploitation portfolios. In addition, we found that a single class of alliance has different impacts on innovation performance depending on whether it is implemented by a young company or a mature company.