Since many U.S. firm engage in highly competitive and global markets, the ability to develop technical innovations, infuse them into novel products, and launch them into new businesses is central to the performance of these firms and the national economy broadly. Yet even the largest firms often lack the time and range of technical resources necessary to develop the best innovations, especially when the technologies are intertwined and the markets are fast-paced. Thus, effective technical collaboration across firms becomes essential. But such collaborations are not easy to achieve given the organizational challenges of working across firms (e.g., cultural differences, geographic distances, differences in incentives), and the strategic challenges of the fundamental tension between competition and cooperation that are inherent in collaborations. Yet despite their importance and significant challenges, there is little research into how technology collaborations among firms actually occur, why some work while others do not, and how they extend into novel products and new business creation. Our research addresses this gap.
The primary purpose of this project is to examine how organizations successfully create technical innovations using cross-firm collaborations, with an emphasis on routines and processes used for collaborating. Given the limited understanding of how cross-firm technology collaborations are managed, we examine eight comparative case studies of collaborations in depth. This approach is particularly useful for uncovering accurate and yet unexpected insights into complex phenomena.
The setting is the computing and communications industries (e.g., semiconductors, networking, software, and Internet security). These are large, dynamic industries that are central to national competitiveness. Also, given their convergent and interdependent nature, these industries are ones in which technical collaborations across firms (e.g., collaborations that combine mobile and microprocessor technologies) are often essential. The focus is on established firms. These firms possess sufficient size to engage in meaningful R&D and sufficient economic scale to influence the national economy.
The data include interviews with a range of participants in the collaborating firms, observations, and archival information from multiple sources. The study should yield a deeper understanding of technical collaborations and their effectiveness, and more broadly, of how these collaborations influence significant economic outcomes including creation of novel products and successful engagement in new and growing global markets.
