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| The Impact of Alliance Portfolio Diversity on Enterprises' Persistent Innovation |
| He Yubing,Zhan Jiafeng |
| (School of Economics and Management, Fuzhou University, Fuzhou 350108, China) |
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Abstract In the backdrop of open innovation, more and more enterprises attach importance to establishing alliance relationships with external organizations to carry out cross-border knowledge search and conduct joint knowledge creation. To maintain the persistence of technological innovation, enterprises are required to build closed alliance relationships based on cooperation with external organizations. Meanwhile, the form of alliance evolves from the bilateral alliance to the alliance portfolio of network organizations, in which enterprises could acquire different types and levels of resources. The alliance portfolio provides opportunities for enterprises to absorb diversified technologies, expand innovative value networks and construct more effective information channels, therefore helping enterprises identify and use new technologies and market opportunities. As the scope of an enterprise's participation in alliances is enlarged, the heterogeneity among alliance partners is thus enhanced. Undoubtedly, the characteristics of diversity in an enterprise's alliance portfolios will have a certain degree of influence on its innovation input and output.#br#Some scholars have explored the effect of alliance portfolio on the persistence of firm innovation based on the combining theory of open innovation and strategic alliance. However, most studies have focused on the internal factors of the enterprises, ignoring the role of external factors. Then the alliance portfolio is taken as an integrated variable in the existing research regarding the internal mechanism between alliance portfolio and persistent innovation. But it is convinced that an alliance portfolio should be analyzed from the perspective of diversity in the context of a focal firm that wants to ally with heterogeneous partners. Moreover, there are two contingent factors,i.e. complementary assets and structural holes,the relationship between alliance portfolio diversity and persistent innovation. However, few studies take the two variables as boundary conditions to explore the contingent effect of alliance portfolio diversity on persistent innovation. Therefore, this study aims to explore the moderating mechanism of complementary assets and structural holes in the influence of alliance portfolio diversity on persistent innovation. It first divides alliance portfolio diversity into three dimensions: partner diversity, functional diversity and governance diversity, and examines the internal relationship between these three alliance portfolio diversities and persistent innovation of enterprises; then it investigates the moderating effect of complementary assets and structural holes on the relationship respectively.#br#The sample is taken from listed companies that have released alliance announcements on the Shenzhen Growth Enterprise Market. On the basis of alliance data from 2013 to 2015 and 2014 to 2016 for three years each, the persistent innovation of the enterprise is measured by innovation input and output in the following years, namely 2016 and 2017. This study provides some interesting empirical results. Firstly, the results show that each dimension of alliance portfolio diversity has a certain degree of influence on the enterprises' persistent innovation. Among them, partner diversity has an inverted U-shaped curve relationship with the persistence of innovation investment, functional diversity has a positive impact on persistent innovation, and governance diversity has a negative impact on persistent innovation; secondly, this study confirms that complementary asset has a positive moderate effect on the relationship between functional diversity and persistent innovation, but has a negative moderate effect on the relationship between governing diversity and persistent innovation; thirdly, the results show that structural hole has a negative moderate effect on the relationship between functional diversity and persistent innovation, but it has a positive moderate effect on the relationship between governing diversity and persistent innovation.#br#On the whole, this study advances the understanding of how alliance portfolio diversity affects an enterprise's persistent innovation, expands the boundary conditions of the relationship between alliance portfolio diversity and persistent innovation of firms, and hence enriches the theoretical literature in the field of persistent innovation. As for the managerial implications, this study provides guidance for enterprises to implement persistent innovation. The enterprises should simultaneously pay attention to the diversity of partners, functions and governance when embedding or constructing an alliance portfolio to acquire innovation-related resources from heterogeneous external organizations;while they should properly use complementary assets and structural holes in the establishment and improvement of alliance portfolio for persistent innovation.#br#
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Received: 17 October 2022
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