How R&D Alliances Achieve Competitive Advantage Through

Shared Strategic Assets: A Literature Review

Submitted by

Saneesh Edacherian
FPM 1st Year
Roll No 10282

HOW R&D ALLIANCES ACHIEVE COMPETITIVE ADVANTAGE

Abstract:

In the wake of increasing competition among the participants of a market place the firms
are looking for new ways to increase their competitive advantage. In specialized
services such as research and development(R&D) firms have strongly garnered interest
in forming strategic alliances to combat the fierce competition in the market. The R&D
alliances require sharing of strategic assets to attain the objective of increasing
competitive advantage. The study has attempted to extend the arguments of most
commonly used theories in strategic management such as resource based view,
transaction cost economics and dynamic capabilities to understand the phenomenon of
firms looking at alliances to attain competitive advantage. Further literature review was
conducted to identify and explain the factors that impact the sharing of strategic assets
in R&D alliances. It is concluded that the theoretical arguments made to explain the
phenomenon need to be empirically tested to gain validation and generalization for
practice.

HOW R&D ALLIANCES ACHIEVE COMPETITIVE ADVANTAGE

Introduction:

In the context of global economy, which is driven by knowledge based competition;

producing innovative products and services have become the most important strategy
for firms, which compete in the market. Since the late 1980s firms across industries had
started to invest in developing innovative capabilities and firms with innovative
resources have clearly had competitive advantage over other firms competing in the
same market place. Several theories of strategic management literature have attempted
to explain this phenomenon. However, the various industries in different periods of the
global economy have witnessed the emergence of alliance in research and
development of innovative products and services. This study attempts to understand the
role of R&D alliances in facilitating firms to achieve competitive advantage.

Methodology:

The study is organized in two parts, first part tries to give a theoretical perspectives to
the phenomenon of alliances and their attempt to achieve competitive advantage and
the second part tries to do a review of key literature that specifically contributes to the
R&D alliance area. The search for the second part was restricted to articles shortlisted
from selected journals based on the SJR rankings published in 2014. The top 20
journals were shortlisted in the subject area of Business Management and accounting.
The sub categories namely Business and international management, management of
technology and innovation, organizational behavior and human resources management

HOW R&D ALLIANCES ACHIEVE COMPETITIVE ADVANTAGE

and strategy and management were used while screening the journals. The articles
from these journals were selected based on Boolean searches conducted in EBSCO
database. The search was conducted with phrases such as R&D alliance and
competitive advantage, R&D alliance and strategic assets, R&D alliance and
strategy, R&D alliance and shared assets and R&D capabilities and shared
resources. The initial reading of few articles had led to few more articles through
Google scholar.

Theoretical Perspectives:
Resource based view
In the recent years the Resource based view (RBV) has become one of the most
influential theories to facilitate the study of strategic management. Stemmed in the early
writings of Penrose, RBV predominantly differed from views of industrial economics of
transaction- based economics by looking the firm from inside it. The further
developments of the RBV by significant contribution by (Rumelt, 1984) and Wernerfelt
(1984) (Wernerfelt, 1984) viewed the firm as the unit of analysis and theorized that a
firms profitability is a function of development of the firms internal resources. Another
key proposition argued by the RBV is that firms strategy for growth is influenced by its
efficiency to balance between the exploitation of existing resources and acquisition of
new resources. The RBV of the firm argues that the internal resources and capabilities
can determine the competitive advantage of the firm under certain conditions(Barney,
1991). The earlier arguments required that any resource to develop competitive
advantage for the firm, the resource should be valuable, rare among the competition,

HOW R&D ALLIANCES ACHIEVE COMPETITIVE ADVANTAGE

imperfectly imitable and without any strategic substitutes (Barney, 1991). This view
connects that the resources and capabilities an organization possess with its potential
to generate economic rents. When these resources and capabilities an organization
possess are capable to extend their contribution beyond the inputs to production
process they are categorized as strategic assets (Amlt & Schoemaker, 1993).
While it is true and proved by several authors in the literature that resources can be a
direct influencer of profitability, the phenomenon of firms looking for alliances outside is
not explained by the RBV including the various advancement contributed by different
authors. In the constantly changing fast growing technology dependent industry,
innovativeness has not been limited to utilization of internal resources but extended to
search of knowledge and skills externally to gain competitive advantage (Fey, 2005).
This strategic move to form external alliances and gain competitive advantage is a
phenomenon more often seen in research and development (R&D) function of a firm.
The alliance is expected to generate internal rents that could be derived by the firms
internal resources, relational rent that is derived primarily by the jointly shared strategic
assets and spillover rents that is unintentionally generated by combination of shared
and internal resources (Lavie, 2006). Since the cost of R&D is becoming more and
more difficult to be borne by the organization, approaching external alliances to pursue
R&D is the best strategy to attain competitive advantage. This R&D alliance formation
has challenged the resource-based view on the characteristics of resources that give
firms its competitive advantage. R&D alliances are predominantly formed to achieve
one of the following such as economies of scale, fixed cost sharing or to avoid
duplication in high technology oriented sectors where innovation is very costly and time

HOW R&D ALLIANCES ACHIEVE COMPETITIVE ADVANTAGE

taking (Sakakibara, 1997). When a firm forms strategic alliance in R&D it has to share
certain resources and assets to produce innovative product as an outcome of the
alliance. The alliance formation could be explained as an extension of the RBVs view
that firm should constantly try to exploit its existing resources and attempt to acquire
new resources, which in an alliance is attained by the new resources pooled in by the
partner (Bck & Kohtamki, 2015). Resource heterogeneity and immobility is closely
related to sustained competitive advantage for a firm in the industry (Barney, 1991).
However when the previously valuable, rare, non-imitable and non-substitutable
resource of a firm has lost the market may witness homogeneity and perfectly mobile
resources. This change can happen due to various exogenous and endogenous
causes. Endogenous causes can include change in overall strategic positioning of the
company, change in the resource matrix of the firm, obsolescence of existing
technology, etc. Externalities such as maturing of the industry, new areas of competitive
advantage can be responsible for erosion of characteristic of resources held by the firm.
While mergers and acquisition has been an age-old strategy to acquire external
resources, Sharing of strategic assets through alliances has become the most preferred
option to acquire resources. In strategic choices where there is high uncertainty in
outcomes and exit cost is high alliances give more economic rents than acquisition
(Sakakibara, 1997).
So to have a macro look at objective of alliance formation it basically tries to restore
heterogeneity and develop imperfectly mobile strategic assets compared to other
competitors. The sharing of strategic assets plays a key role in attaining sustainable
competitive advantage for the firm (Lavie, 2006). The nature of sharing strategic assets

HOW R&D ALLIANCES ACHIEVE COMPETITIVE ADVANTAGE

is an important determinant in the structure of alliance. Since the resources are owned
and controlled by individual firms, sharing has gained its importance because the firms
will try to attain a concordant balance between sharing and defending its resources in
an alliance. The alliance can be either where the firms form a pooling alliance where the
firms pool in similar resources to achieve greater strength in the industry or form a
complementary alliance where firms try to achieve synergy by sharing closely related
assets (Lavie, 2006). The most commonly employed strategic assets for sharing in an
alliance are technological, human and organizational. In R&D alliance there is increased
interest to access partners firm specific and tacit assets though it is a common
knowledge that firm specific and tacit assets is accumulated at a slower pace and more
difficult to transfer (Amlt & Schoemaker, 1993). But bundle of assets that are
characterized by specificity, durability and scarcity in the industry will form more
valuable strategic asset that can attain sustained competitive advantage (Amlt &
Schoemaker, 1993).
The firms participating in an alliance have high incentive to exhibit opportunism where
firms leave the alliance after gaining know how of the partners resources and
capabilities or unevenly appropriate the outcomes of an alliance engagement
(Williamson, 2014). However as mentioned earlier the firms which participate in an R&D
alliance would be also be in the industry that is highly innovative and with high cost of
innovation with high failure rates. So this will be reflected in each firms fear to
participate in the alliance and sharing of strategic assets. The sharing agreement will
depend on the individual resource and intended outcome of the alliance. So some
assets will be of limited access and others will be shared completely (Sakakibara,

HOW R&D ALLIANCES ACHIEVE COMPETITIVE ADVANTAGE

1997). For example an alliance for the initial stages of drug development in a particular
therapeutic area with a competitor will involve an alliance where the firm shares only the
resources specific to that therapeutic area and in other areas the firm will treat its
partner as a competitor. However if the alliance is to have a post marketing exercise
after the launch of a drug then the resources sharing will have very less limitations and
it would predominantly involve sharing of distribution channels and marketing resources.
On aggregation of the discussion in an alliance, which involves R&D, the strategic asset
that shared would be bundled such that it is able to create heterogeneity in the industry
and result in resource position barriers mentioned by RBV that can eventually lead to
sustained competitive advantage.

Transaction cost theory:

Transaction cost economics attempts to make economic sense to the existence of an
organization. It argues that the existence of an organization is directly attributable to the
economics that exist between the transaction that could happen in the market place and
the transaction in hierarchical set up and the latter happens to be cheaper compared to
the former (Wiersema, 2012). While RBV, as discussed describes alliances as firms
pool in resources to utilize that to maximize profit TCE attempts to explain alliances as
an outcome of a firms belief that transaction cost is minimized when transaction
happens between the two firms. The TCE is more instrumental in explaining the kind of
structural arrangement that exist in an alliance and why that particular alliance is
chosen. Since TCE is predominantly cost driven we can safely argue that alliance exists
because the associated cost is minimal compared to pure market based or hierarchical

HOW R&D ALLIANCES ACHIEVE COMPETITIVE ADVANTAGE

transaction (Brockhoff, 1992). Extending these argument, R&D alliances are formed
because of the firms realization that sharing R&D costs is more economical than the
cost of in-house R&D or lost opportunity of not investing in the R&D on a particular area.
This means that cost of collaboration and management of alliance should be lesser than
the economic rents that the outcome of the alliance will generate.
TCE can also be extended to see how the sharing of assets is controlled by the certain
factors involved in the transaction incorporated in the alliance. When looking at the
sources that can generate inter organizational competitive advantage, the assets can be
classified as relation specific asset, knowledge sharing attempts, complimentary
resources and capabilities and effective governance (Dyer & Singh, 1998). Relation
specific assets are one of the important investments the firms in the alliance make to
generate economic rents through the alliance. When the assets that is expected to be
involved in the alliance is very firm specific then the firm will be more cautious in
choosing the alliance over internal R&D (Bck & Kohtamki, 2015). The sharing of
strategic assets are more limited when the asset specificity is high as the transaction
cost involved is high and there is higher risk of the partner to exhibit opportunism. The
R&D alliance involving high-end novel technologies is more prone to technological
uncertainty and this will make the sharing of strategic assets more limited because of
the high transaction cost loss involved in case of failure in alliance or research outcome.
In this case the TCE suggests that the alliance will be more hierarchical with multiple
governing structures. The alliances are classified on the basis of resource sharing
modes as exchange based and integration (Yasuda, 2005). The exchange alliance is
more superficial and there is minimal sharing of strategic assets and integration

HOW R&D ALLIANCES ACHIEVE COMPETITIVE ADVANTAGE

alliances are more intrinsic where the resources of the partners are embedded into the
each others firms and both work towards a joint outcome, which represents joint efforts
(Yasuda, 2005). This kind of alliance is predominantly seen in R&D alliances involving
industries that witness rapidly changing and dynamic environment, which is also fiercely
competitive. The asset specificity and high technological uncertainty described
previously is more witnessed in the integration type of alliances. Irrespective of the type
of alliance the basic premise of TCE that transaction cost of forming an alliance should
be economical among other strategic options that a firm can chose from. This
transaction cost can be represented by various components of cost structures such as
human resource, fixed costs, managerial cost, cost of knowledge transfer to name a
few. And this is impacted by scale of economies, learning cost involved and
organizational rigidity.

Theory of Dynamic Capabilities:

Theory of Dynamic capabilities is built on the RBV and it adds that the unique resources
required for a firms competitive advantage has to co-evolve along with the dynamic
changes in the environment to attain sustained competitive advantage (Teece, Pisano,
& Shuen, 1997). This theory emphasis that not just the resources but also the way this
resources are gained also matters in the long run competitive advantage. I would like to
bring in dynamic capabilities model to view strategic alliances in two ways. Firstly to
enable the firm to dynamically build strategic assets in response to the external
environment the boundary of the firm would be a constraint this is because as
discussed earlier in RBV as the industry matures homogeneity is expected to rein in the

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HOW R&D ALLIANCES ACHIEVE COMPETITIVE ADVANTAGE

industry. The presence of path dependencies and complementary assets the capability
development of the firm though attempts to happen will be restrained by the boundaries
of the firm (Deeds, Decarolis, & Coombs, 1999). Partnering and gaining access to
partners resources and capabilities could effectively develop the dynamic capabilities.
Secondly the alliance formed is also expected to witness challenges from the dynamic
environment and in alliances involved R&D the external environment is changing at a
rapid phase and this is coupled with the fact that the alliance itself has to develop itself
and evolve itself in response to the changing environment to attain competitive
advantage. In this regard the process, position and path defined by the theory becomes
important even with relation to the R&D alliance (Deeds et al., 1999). The theory says
that managerial and organizational process is important for a firm to induce dynamic
development of capabilities, similarly in an alliance management of the alliance is the
key to ensure that the alliance is able to jointly achieve its outcome. In rapidly changing
high technology R&D alliance, the management and integration process involved is
essential to lead the alliance to dynamically develop its resources in response to the
environment. Though the theory does not directly mention the assets that are jointly
developed by the partners in the alliance the synergy caused by the sharing of
resources will enable the partners to develop dynamic capabilities in the alliance and
position the firms in a competitive advantage position in the industry.

Analysis of Literature on R&D Alliances:

The R&D alliances have received enough attention of the researchers in this field. On
careful analysis of the collected research articles it can be understood that the

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HOW R&D ALLIANCES ACHIEVE COMPETITIVE ADVANTAGE

knowledge disseminated in the literature collected, indicates that there are few factors
that impact strategic assets that influence competitive advantage of a R&D alliance. The
following factors are identified as impacting the strategic assets in an alliance and its
competitive advantage eventually.
1. Characteristics of the participants.
2. Externalities
3. Structure of the alliance

Characteristics of the participants:

The characteristics of the participants in the alliances will be the basic platform on which
the strategic shared assets could be discussed. This is primarily because the R&D
alliance or in that case any strategic alliance would require a strategic planning of
resources by the participants, which in turn develop into strategic assets. The
fundamental reason, which a firm forms, an alliance is that it can maximize the output of
innovation by the synergistic effect of the resources of all the participants of the alliance.
The formulation strategy would be to understand the weightage that required to be
given to the the leveraging of existing internal resources or acquire the know how and
gain knowledge from the other participant in the alliance (March, 1991) (Tushman &
OReilly, 1996). This will have a great impact on the shared assets that are pooled into
the alliance. The various literature had looked at characteristics of the participants such
as size, the previous learning from alliances, technological diversity, nature 0f the
participants and space distance between the two alliance partners.

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HOW R&D ALLIANCES ACHIEVE COMPETITIVE ADVANTAGE

Size of the firm is one of the key determinants of strategic assets in the alliance.
Research studies have argued that smaller firms are at greater advantage for its small
size. The primary reason that the small firms have less rigidity in their organization. The
lack of rigidity enables quick adaptability to the ongoing new scenario and this
characteristic is quite necessary in this current scenario (Thorgren, Wincent, & Boter,
2012). The arguments in published papers are that R&D alliances need more
adaptability because the environment around keeps changing dynamically. This was
one of the definite conditions addressed by the knowledge-based view of the firm.
In an alliance between a small firm and a large firm the assets brought by the two are
completely different. The large firm may have big R&D team, infrastructure, etc.
however the small firm might have only that one technology which the big company is
interested in. This is quite evident in the pharmaceutical industry as big companies,
which are lacking the drug pipeline and will be interested to acquire or form join R& D
alliances with smaller firms, which has some innovative products.

Proposition 1:
In unequal R&D alliance formation in terms of size, the change in shared asset
contribution from the smaller firm during the evolution of R&D alliance is insignificant.

Externalities:
Environmental uncertainty is one of the key externalities that may influence the alliance
and R&D alliance generally involves high level of commitment from both the partners
participating in an alliance. The environmental uncertainty can impact the sharing of

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HOW R&D ALLIANCES ACHIEVE COMPETITIVE ADVANTAGE

strategic assets in an alliance in two ways. Firstly the environmental uncertainty can
impact the firms business environment and this might cause a change in the resources
or capabilities and in turn impact the contribution to the alliance. Secondly the
environmental uncertainty can impact the alliance directly by the changes in the
environment that might make the project outcome not feasible or an expected failure. In
R&D alliance the direct impact of environmental uncertainty can happen through
regulatory changes, competitors coming up with similar product first in the market, etc.
The firms generally respond to this externalities by dynamically developing its
capabilities to make the alliance stronger and attain competitive advantage (Teece et
al., 1997).
Proposition 2:
The externalities will negatively influence the sharing of strategic assets among the
alliance partners.

Structure of the alliance:

The structure of the alliance plays a significant role in determining the way strategic
assets are shared in an alliance and the success thereon. The structure of the alliance
aims to strike a right balance between attempts to allow sufficient level of open
knowledge exchange that would facilitate the alliance to achieve the objective and the
measures that would try to prevent leakage of irrelevant resources and capabilities that
can provide access to valuable technology (Oxley & Sampson, 2004). The structure of
alliance determines the boundaries of the alliance and thereby the sharing of resources.
In areas where the alliance outcome is more uncertain the contractual agreements are

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HOW R&D ALLIANCES ACHIEVE COMPETITIVE ADVANTAGE

stringier in clearly identifying the liabilities and responsibilities in case of failure of the
research experiment. In R&D in high technology sensitive industries such as
biotechnology, pharmaceutical, semi conductor the alliance is more often equity joint
ventures. In these kinds of alliances, since the risk involved is high there is problem in
appropriation in outcome or cost of failure. This problem is caused by behavioral
uncertainty and lack of clarity in contractual agreements (Chen & Chen, 2003). So
empirical studies done previously have said in these situations the partners generally
look for a equity joint venture type alliance wherein the level of hierarchical control is
clear among the participants of the alliance. However this type of alliance structure
which attempts more governing structures will involve more coordination costs and
complex organizational structures will limit the ease of sharing of strategic assets (Gulati
& Singh, 1998).
Proposition 3: The structural complexity of the alliance is inversely proportional to the
ease of sharing strategic assets in a R&D alliance.

Trust among the alliance partners:

Trust is an important factor that governs the success or failure of an alliance and this
has a tremendous impact on the sharing of strategic assets. Its impact is high in interorganizational alliance that involves high end knowledge transfer and resource sharing
(Aalbers, 2010). In these alliances cooperation and is essential in the long run to
facilitate high-end innovation. Both the RBV and TCE has not attempted much to
emphasis the importance of trust for an organizations progress. Researchers have
argues previously that trust is an important factor because the lack of trust can increase

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HOW R&D ALLIANCES ACHIEVE COMPETITIVE ADVANTAGE

the transaction cost involved in monitoring knowledge transfer and alliance performance
(Adler, 2001). And this transaction cost is expected to increase in R&D alliance, which
has high technological uncertainty in outcome. Trust can influence the relation between
the alliance participants and can impact the sharing of strategic assets. In alliances
where the trust between the alliance participants is less the firms are expected to be
very cautious and more concerned about the expected opportunism exhibited by the
partner firm. This will force the firm to restrict access to the resources and capabilities
for the partner firm. This can lower the performance of the alliance and might not allow
the alliance to achieve the intended competitive advantage. This is primarily because in
long-term relationship such as R&D alliance trust is essential for the alliance to sustain
the environmental uncertainty and other externalities. Moreover it is understood that
asset specificity will reduce the transferability in an alliance (Adler, 2001) and this
coupled with reduced trust among the partners will have a negative effect on the sharing
of strategic assets.

Proposition 4:
Trust among the participants can act as buffer to reduce the impact of uncertainty in the
environment of an alliance.

Conclusion:
To sum up the various theories of strategic management can be revisited to extend their
arguments to accommodate the sharing of strategic assets by alliances in specialized
functions such as R&D. The extensions made in argument of various strategic

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HOW R&D ALLIANCES ACHIEVE COMPETITIVE ADVANTAGE

management theories such as resource based view; transaction cost and dynamic
capabilities and the propositions on the factors that impact sharing of assets in R&D
alliances should be tested by empirical data to have a better understanding of the
phenomenon.

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HOW R&D ALLIANCES ACHIEVE COMPETITIVE ADVANTAGE

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