appropriation of knowledge created within strategic alliances: a conceptual model for asymmetrical knowledge-based relationships
- Paper number
IAC-08.E6.1.6
- Author
Mr. Jean Verhardt, EstrellaSat, The Netherlands
- Coauthor
Dr. Ludovico Alcorta, The Netherlands
- Year
2008
- Abstract
New firms developing or adapting technology, usually have insufficient resources to complete this task on their own. One of the ways in which firms can gain access to the necessary resources is to cooperate with external partners in a network of international strategic alliances. Where development of new technological knowledge occurs within the boundary of the firm as a legal entity, the firm automatically owns the new knowledge. Where the development of knowledge takes place within an international alliance the new knowledge may not be automatically appropriated by any one of the alliance partners. Contractual control over the results of external research activity is only effective in identifying and allocating ownership of codified new knowledge. Yet, the bulk of the new knowledge may be of a tacit or un-codified nature. The paper argues that a second boundary of the firm exists; where the firm’s internal knowledge generating networks extend beyond the legal boundary, into surrounding international alliance cooperation networks, creating a “knowledge boundary”. The area between both can be defined as the space where internal and external networks actively exchange ideas to create new, mainly tacit knowledge, but over which the firms’ own networks have no full control. The ‘lines’ of the knowledge border are defined by the focus and expertise each one of the participants brings into the exchange. Hence, the area between legal and knowledge boundaries is also defined in terms of a set of overlapping foci, an area of interaction of individual focus, which in turn widens the initial border lines. Appropriating the tacit knowledge generated beyond the legal boundary and within the knowledge boundary and avoiding excessive leakage from own ‘proprietary’ knowledge is also a function of focus. In concentrating their attention on a specific set of issues, internal networks foreclose exploring ideas and avenues that do not solve the problems or address the questions at stake. The more complementary the knowledge brought in by international partners or the larger the knowledge overlap, the larger the potential for leakage. Appropriating requires a continuous ‘re-focusing’ and narrowing down of the company’s knowledge boundary so that overlap is reduced. Where international alliances involve firms with multiple complementary foci and single focus firms, the process of identifying the latter’s exact knowledge ‘niche’ also requires internal networks rapidly absorbing and transferring knowledge back into the legal boundary. Support for these ideas comes from a small Australian based technology business. This firm specialises in creating competitive mobile data services over satellite based on an extensive number of international strategic alliances, and is a small niche player in a global field, dominated by powerful foreign companies with deep pockets. Technical progress is achieved in alliance with these offshore partners, all of which constantly strive to extract the maximum benefit from their association with the company. The firm applies technical knowledge by forming international, inter-alliance teams to take a known, codified “block” of intellectual property (IP) and combining it with other IP to create an innovative advance in a particular product or service. The IP may be owned by the company, or it can be owned by partners. Because it is codified, its ownership is beyond doubt. But the process of combining the blocks requires the continuous application of tacit knowledge that is contained within the team, leading to the creation of an entirely new block of knowledge. Management influences the focus of each alliance partners’ team members by means of regular team progress meetings, where the team reports on all aspects of the development work. In this way, management keeps their teams focused and minimise the non-essential leakage of proprietary knowledge. Keywords: International strategic alliances; internal and external knowledge networks; tacit knowledge; knowledge boundary; knowledge appropriation
- Abstract document
- Manuscript document
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