A firm that lacks the specialized complementary assets necessary to commercialize an innovation faces a trade-off between contracting with an incumbent to access those assets and integrating downstream into commercialization. According to the framework developed in the prior literature, under a...

We develop a model of product development based on the alliance portfolio of high technology firms. We draw on the capabilities perspective and argue that the impact of upstream, horizontal, and downstream alliances on the new firms' rate of product development depends on the degree of...