A large part of the literature from industrial organisation and management expects that, compared with unrelated M&As, related M&As show superior economic performance because of synergetic effects that follow from economies of scale and scope. The current contribution takes the debate on the...

This paper examines the relevance of both an efficiency-based network strategy and a learning-based network strategy in the context of inter-firm partnering. The effect of these different forms of network behaviour on company performance is analysed for companies in the international computer...

Until recently technological development in the personal computer industry could be characterized by the competition between two basic designs. The current dominant design in this industry is associated with the IBM and Microsoft personal computing architecture. The other version of personal...

This paper explores the preferences that companies have as they use alternative external sources of innovative competences such as strategic technology alliances, mergers and acquisitions, or a mix of these. These alternatives are studied in the context of distinct industrial, technological and...

When companies decide to engage in technology transfer through licensing to other firms, they have two basic options: to use standard licensing contracts or to set-up more elaborate partnership-embedded licensing agreements. We find that broader partnership-embedded licensing agreements are...

Our exploratory empirical study, based on a series of in-depth interviews and a survey of firms, searches for answers on a number of questions that deal with the role of formal contracts and intellectual property rights in the context of open innovation. We find that firms active in open...

Research on technological partnerships has traditionally sought explanation of their high failure rates in partner characteristics and relationship features. This study introduces the notion of a 'bumpy road' in technology partnerships which refers to undesired outcomes such as 'partnership...

The mixed picture of extant research on the relationship between internal and external R&D prompts us to ask such a question: under what conditions is there complementarity or substitutability between different R&D strategies? The goal of this paper is to contribute to the empirical literature...

Evolutionary understanding of behaviour of firms is gradually becoming more accepted in a variety of disciplines such as economics, management and organization. Contributing to a multi-disciplinary understanding of strategic behaviour, this paper analyzes foreign direct investment strategies of...

This paper investigates the role of intellectual property rights (IPRs) in shaping the GSM industry. Thisindustry is an example of a high-tech industry in which standards play a large role. In the process ofdesigning the GSM standard, a lot of attention has been given to IPRs, mainly to avoid a...