Lahiri & Narayanan (2013) "Vertical intergration, innovation, and alliance portfolio size: Implications for firm performance
22 important questions on Lahiri & Narayanan (2013) "Vertical intergration, innovation, and alliance portfolio size: Implications for firm performance
What do the authors examine?
Where do alliances enable firms access to?
In which ways can alliance portfolio resources be exploited?
- Increasing portfolio size increases the number of alliances from which firms draw resources. External knowledge gained from alliances can, in turn, be applied to improve innovation performance
- With a portfolio of alliances, firms learn to attribute outcomes to changes in inputs and processes, allowing better identification of cause and effect
- Engaging in a larger portfolio of alliances enables firms to learn and utilize diverse knowledge from partners better over time
- Firms with larger alliance portfolios are likely to see greater survival rates of their alliances
- Higher grades + faster learning
- Never study anything twice
- 100% sure, 100% understanding
In which three categories can prior research on exploiting alliance portfolio resources be divided?
- Alliance portfolio size
- Alliance portfolio characteristics such as breadth, density, level of redundancy, and strength of individual alliances in a portfolio
- Characteristics of partners in the alliance portfolio
Which two contingencies to improve the understanding of how APS impacts the focal firm's performance are identified?
- The focal firm's choice to vertically integrate or not
- The choice to invest resources in innovation that manifest in high levels of innovation performance
Why are vertically integrated firms more likely to have internal access to a broader knowledge base of firm-specific knowledge than vertically specialized firms?
What about innovation and financial performance?
Why is increasing APS likley to enhance innovation performance on the firm?
- Firms with larger APS will have access to a wider variety of knowledge resources from different partners
- Increased diversity of knowledge elements from external sources increases the opportunities for novel combinations
- A larger number of ongoing alliances indicates higher centrality of the focal firm in the network of industry peers, wich allows the focal firm access to greater variety in types of information
Why is it good to have access to a wider variety of knowledge resources?
What are the challenges of utilizing external knowledge that increases with greater diversity of knowledge?
- The challenges of search, identification, and transfer of knowledge resources across portfolio of partners increases significantly as the APS increases
- The importance of firms' internal routines that are required to develop products and processes.
Why are firms with larger APS likely to experience increased financial performance?
- Firms in fast-paced industries face increased uncertainty arising out of technology volatility (vluchtigheid) and demand uncertainty
- Larger APS enables the focal firm to lower costs through several cost-effective technologies of partners and the potential for increased economies of scale from multiple alliance partners
What are the reasons why an increase in APS can have diminishing or even negative impact on firm performance?
- Firms pursue the most promising alliance options and pursue those opportunities early on. This leaves less productive alliance options as firms engage in an increasing number of alliances
- As APS increases, the effectiveness of a manager's ability to exploit the alliances for their benefit will decrease given the increased demands on managerial attention and bounded rationality
- With an increasing APS, bureaucracy and transaction costs of coordinating simultaneously across multiple parties increases
- Past research suggests that alliance experience has a curvilinear impact on alliance success
Creation of knowledge involves repeated use of
What do the authors propose drawing on the resource dependence theory (RDT)?
Why may innovation-oriented firms rely more on their own knowledge?
Why is the choice of vertical scope critical to firm profitability?
Where does the choice to vertically integrate allows firm to?
What are the decisions that VI/VS firms can make?
- Make
- Buy
- Make and buy
What do the authors argue about the benefit from increasing APS for VI firms?
Whereby may alliance portfolios impact innovation performance? Building on the idea that innovation results from search, transfer, combination, and recombination of knowledge elements
- By contributing novel knowledge elements to the focal firm for conceptualizing unique solutions to problems
- By increasing diversity of knowledge elements from external sources to increase the combinatorial possibilities of potentially novel solutions
In which ways will a fim's choice of vertical integration influence the impact of APS on innovation performance?
- For external knowledge sourced from the alliance portfolio to be useful in problem solving it must be novel to the focal firm
- Larger alliance portfolios allow increased combinatorial possibilities to enhance the likelihood of novel problem solutions
- Prior research has established the importance of resource slack to a firm's success in pursuing innovation
Larger alliance portfolios allow increased combinatorial possibilities to enhance the likelihood of novel problem solutions.
The question on the page originate from the summary of the following study material:
- A unique study and practice tool
- Never study anything twice again
- Get the grades you hope for
- 100% sure, 100% understanding
![Trustpilot Logo](/images/design_2020/lp/clp-trustpilot-en.png)