Learning Alliances and Open Innovation

Especially where it concerns innovation and recognizing and exploiting substantial opportunities in a global market, firms can no longer afford a "go it alone" strategy. Instead, the ability to collaborate in alliances and in dynamically changing virtual organizations with others is increasingly critical to the firm's performance.

Advances in ICT have facilitated the easy exchange of rich information across organizations and enabled the "death of distance", but of course the success of collaboration requires the strategic ability to select the right partners and create conditions that are beneficial to all. This theme investigates how collaboration with business partners and consumers enables the integration of internal and external knowledge and contribute to social innovation. It studies learning alliances and other examples of open innovation, via corporate campuses or otherwise. It also investigates the role that the active involvement of customers can play in triggering change and exploring new directions, based on the idea of "democratizing innovation".

Researchers working on this theme:

  • Geert Duysters (Coordinator)

    Geert Duysters (1966) is a professorial fellow at UNU-MERIT and a professor of Organization Science at the Eindhoven University of Technology.

  • Bas ter Weel

    Bas ter Weel is Head of the Department of International Economics at the CPB Netherlands Bureau for Economic Policy Analysis in The Hague, the Netherlands. He is also working as a senior researcher at UNU-MERIT, Maastricht University.

  • Charmianne Dunnewijk-Lemmens

    Charmianne works as researcher for UNU-MERIT and the Maastricht University Office.

  • Elise Meijer

    Elise is a Ph.D. Candidate at the department of Industrial Engineering & Innovation Sciences at the Eindhoven University of Technology.

    Elise is a Ph.D. Candidate at the department of Industrial Engineering & Innovation Sciences at the Eindhoven University of Technology

  • Luc Soete

    Luc Soete (Brussels, 1950) is Director of UNU-MERIT (the United Nations University-Maastricht Economic and social Research and training centre on Innovation and Technology).

  • Martin Carree

    Martin Caree is full professor of Industrial Organization. The chair is part of the Department of Organization & Strategy

  • Wilko Letterie

    Wilko Letterie holds a Master degree in Econometrics and a PhD from the Erasmus University Rotterdam. Currently he is associate professor at the department of Organization and Strategy at Maastricht University, Faculty of Economics and Business Administration.

  • Yvonne Kirkels

    Yvonne is a Ph.D. candidate at the faculty of Business Management and Engineering, Fontys University of Applied Sciences in Eindhoven and a visiting Ph.D. candidate at the department of Innovation Technology Entrepreneurship & Marketing, faculty of Industrial Engineering & Innovation Sciences, Eindhoven University of Technology

  • Alliance Capability as a Mediator
    8 April 2009, Article

    This study centres around the way in which firms can enhance alliance performance through the development of alliance capabilities. Whereas most research has focused on inter-firm antecedents of alliance performance, research on intra-firm antecedents pointing to prior experience and internal mechanisms to foster knowledge transfer has only recently emerged. As little is known about how firms develop alliance capabilities explain performance heterogenity. The data are derived from a detailed survey held among alliance managers and Vice-Presidents of 151 firms. The survey covers over 2600 alliances for the period 1997-2001. This study not only finds that alliance capabilities partially mediate between alliance experience and alliciance performance, but also yields novel insights into the micro-level building blocks underlying the process of alliance capability development.