We present a theory for predicting how business firms form alliances to develop and sponsor technical standards. Our basic assumptions are that the utility of a firm for joining a particular standard-setting alliance increases with the size of the alliance and decreases with the presence of...

Unlike problems requiring new-to-the-world solutions that combine knowledge from multiple sources, operational problems can often be solved by repurposing existing knowledge from other contexts into new-to-the-firm solutions. Firms that seek new-to-the-firm solutions to operational problems face...