Collaboration and innovation: a review of the effects of mergers, acquisitions and alliances on innovation

By A. P. Man, Geert Duysters. 2005

411 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Over the past decades, a strong upheaval in the use of alternative forms of organization gave way to increased attention in the academic literature to the performance effects of, in particular, strategic alliances and mergers and acquisitions (M&A). Whereas mergers and acquisitions and strategic alliances are primarily known for their ability to facilitate entry into new markets and their effectiveness in achieving scale and scope economies we would like to focus on their effects on the innovative performance of companies involved. In spite of the vast and rapidly growing body of literature on the use and structure of strategic alliances and mergers and acquisitions, there are hardly any studies that address the question of whether one mode of partnering is superior to the other in terms of strengthening the innovative capabilities of the partners involved. Moreover, no extensive review of the empirical literature on this specific research topic is available. Given the growing importance of innovation for the competitive position of companies (Porter, 1990) and the fact that innovation is shown to be one of the driving forces of 20th century growth (Franko, 1989) it is of eminent importance that we study the effect of alternative governance mechanisms on the innovative performance of companies (Vanhaverbeke et al., 2002). Since, no general conclusions have been drawn based on the existing literature, knowledge accumulation is inhibited. It is unclear which research questions have already been answered and which are still open for further exploration. The lack of a coherent overview also implies that practitioners have no empirically validated guidelines when preparing for the best mode of organizing for innovation. Should managers opt for M&A or an alliance if they intend to increase innovation? What specific circumstances affect this choice? What type of alliance is best suited to a particular situation? The absence of an exhausting overview of empirical findings so far, makes it impossible to even begin answering these questions. Hence, there is a necessity for a review of empirical studies on the effect of M&A versus alliances on innovation.

Subfields: Strategy and Management

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/6fe10b70c6773f9a71c059309f0c35effb50fd5f

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In Strategy and Management

Citations in the corpus

Returns to alliance portfolio diversity : The relative effects of partner diversity on firm’s innovative performance and productivity (2014, background): “…factors such as product complexity, growing importance of time-tomarket, increasingly geographically dispersed technological knowledge, as well as the rising costs of R&D, have led to a strong increase in the number of alliances between firms (De Man & Duysters, 2005; Li, Qian, & Qian, 2013).”
Strategic repositioning by means of alliance networks: The case of IBM (2007, background): “However, the same publications seem not to clarify how such alliance networks can act as catalysts of large-scale strategic change projects (De Man and Duysters, 2005).”
Technology exploitation in the context of open innovation: Finding the right ‘job’ for your technology (2010, background): “…trend towards open innovation, the outward transfer of a firm’s own proprietary technology has only recently become an important dimension of corporate strategy (De Man and Duysters, 2005; Durrani et al., 1998; Kim, 2009; Murovec and Prodan, 2009; Spithoven et al., 2010; Veugelers et al., 2010).”
Brokerage in SME networks (2010, background): “A wide range of studies have highlighted otential contributions of partners to a company’s innovation fforts and the positive impact of technological interweaving on a rm’s innovation success (de Man and Duysters, 2005; Hagedoorn, 002; Keizer et al., 2002; Powell et al., 1996).”
How social capital and knowledge affect innovation (2011, background): “In this context, organizations can exchange resources for mutual benefit, counteracting technological specialization and resource scarcity and decreasing the risk associated with major research projects (De Man and Duysters, 2005; Kotabe and Swan, 1995).”
Determinants of Alliance Portfolio Complexity and Its Effect on Innovative Performance of Companies (2011, positive): “…access to international knowledge flows along with such well studied channels as FDI, trade, foreign technology payments (Coe and Helpman, 1995; Eaton and Kortum, 1996, 1999; Van Pottelsberghe and Lichtenberg, 2001) and mergers & acquisitions (Bresman et al., 1999; de Man and Duysters, 2005).”
Did the global financial crisis impact firms' innovation performance? The role of internal and external knowledge capabilities in high and low tech industries (2018, positive): “…the innovation management literature as ‘access relationships’ that enable partners to acquire non-redundant knowledge and capabilities residing outside their organisational and technological boundaries (Cui and O’Connor, 2012; Chesbrough, 2012; De Man and Duysters, 2005; Vasudeva and Anand, 2011).”
Beating Competitors to International Markets: The Value of Geographically Balanced Networks for Innovation (2014, background): “Such networks play a valuable role in opening conduits to much-needed knowledge, thereby increasing new product development speed and lowering internationalization risks (de Man and Duysters, 2005).”