Always on par? How small- and medium-sized enterprises manage coopetition strategies to innovate with large firms
研究了中小企业如何通过协同使用三种合作竞争策略（联合分销、技术许可、研发合作开发）来管理与大企业合作中的不对称风险，从而最大化创新收益。
This article explores how entrepreneurial small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) manage coopetition strategies to innovate with large firms. While coopetition offers opportunities for innovation and growth, asymmetries between SMEs and large firms can provoke unilateral actions, opportunistic tactics, and knowledge theft which can undermine SME innovation power and jeopardise coopetition success. Based on a qualitative multiple-case study of 25 coopetitive innovation projects, each involving an SME and a large firm, we find that SMEs manage these risks by pursuing a synergistic mix of three distinct coopetition strategies: (1) Co-distribution, (2) Technology licensing, and (3) R&D co-development. In each strategy, SMEs navigate different coopetition intensities by dynamically combining the principles of separation, integration, co-management and co-ownership to achieve specific innovation outcomes. Our findings suggest that SMEs shift between cooperation- and competition-dominant strategies and employ a mix of management principles to offset asymmetrical risks and maximise their innovation benefits from coopetition with large firms.