The Dynamics of Research Alliances: Examining the Effect of Alliance Experience and Partner Characteristics on the Speed of Alliance Entry in the Biotech Industry
研究了生物技术公司如何从联盟经验中学习并发展联盟能力，发现公司进入新研究联盟的速度受先前经验影响，但不受伙伴特征影响。
Few studies have moved beyond the dyadic level of an ongoing alliance and examined factors contributing to the success of entering a series of alliances. In this paper we expect biotechnology firms over time to learn from their alliance experience and to develop general alliance capabilities. Specifically, we expect the speed with which they enter into new research alliances, e.g. their alliance formation rate, to be affected by capabilities built up in prior alliances as well as by characteristics of their partners. We use longitudinal event history data for the complete population of US biotechnology firms for 1973–1999 to test four hypotheses about factors affecting the rate of new alliance formation. Our analysis suggests that the speed of entering research alliances is affected by prior experience of the focal firm, but not by partner characteristics. Our findings provide evidence that biotech firms learn how to learn more effectively from multiple research alliances; however, this effect is generalized and not tied to specific characteristics of the alliance partner.