Knowledge sharing in technology alliances

This book gives an overview of all kinds of new forms of organization and inter-firm collaboration. This overview is naturally diverse, as collaboration between firms is initiated for different reasons, occurs in many different forms and in very different industries. In this chapter we will focus on collaboration in high-tech industries and more specifically on alliances that aim at innovation. These so called 'technology alliances' have typical knowledge and technology related issues that differentiate them from other types of alliances, such as collaborative distribution, production or sales agreements. This focus on technology alliances is relevant because recent years have shown a large increase in the use of alliances by high-tech firms in their efforts to innovate. Alliances could be set up between actors in their supply chain on a dyadic level (e.g., early supplier involvement in product development projects), but could also encompass numerous partners including competitors (e.g., large research or standard setting consortia) (Hagedoorn, 1993; Gulati, 1998; Ahuja, 2000; Powell et aI., 1996). Hence, alliances are important organizational building blocks in the development and evolution of supply chains and business networks. A more detailed examination of technology alliances is thus legitimate and relevant to chain and network studies in general.