Serving low-income markets: Rethinking Multinational Corporations’ Strategies

In recent years a new debate is emerging about market-based approaches to serve lowincome communities, opportunities in such markets and the role of multinational corporations. This paper aims at providing an overview of low-income markets thereby analyzing challenges that multinational corporations face in addressing such markets. Various examples of low-income market approaches are examined and different firm strategies regarding R&D, production and distribution in such markets have been illustrated and discussed. It is argued why specific strategies, many of them new to multinationals, are to be devised when it comes to serving low-income communities.Multinational corporations, Low-income markets, Bottom of the Pyramid, Business strategy

Developing Alliance Capabilities in a New Era

alliance, capability

Alliance capability as mediator between experience and alliance performance: an empirical investigation into the alliance capability development process

alliance, performance, capability

The Effect of Mergers and Acquisitions on the Technological Performance of Companies in a High-tech Environment

A large part of the literature from industrial organisation and management expects that, compared with unrelated M&As, related M&As show superior economic performance because of synergetic effects that follow from economies of scale and scope. The current contribution takes the debate on the effect of different M&As somewhat further by studying the effect of M&As on the technological performance of companies. In this study the technological performance of M&As is related to a high-tech sector, i.e. the computer industry. The main result of this research is that the so called strategic and organisational fit between companies involved in M&As seem to play an important role in improving the technological performance of companies.management and organization theory ;

Learning in Dynamic Inter-firm Networks - The Efficacy of Multiple Contacts

This paper examines the relevance of both an efficiency-based network strategy and a learning-based network strategy in the context of inter-firm partnering. The effect of these different forms of network behaviour on company performance is analysed for companies in the international computer industry. Strategies associated with learning through so-called exploratory networks appear to generate a greater impact on technological performance in a dynamic environment than efficiency strategies through exploitative networks.industrial organization ;

Determinants of alliance portfolio complexity and its effect on innovative performance of companies

Alliance formation is often described as a mechanism used by firms to increase voluntary knowledge transfers. Access to external knowledge has been increasingly recognized as a main source of a firm's innovativeness. In this paper we examine decisions to form alliance portfolios of foreign and domestic partners by three groups of firms: innovators (firms that are successful in introducing new products to the market), imitators (firms that are successful at introducing new products, which are not new to the market) and product non-innovators. We consider an alliance portfolio that includes different partnership types (competitor, customer, supplier, university/research center). We develop a measure of portfolio complexity which we define as the number and diversity of elements of the alliance portfolio with which a firm must interact. We then estimate models that explain portfolio complexity and its impact on firm's innovative performance. Using panel data on more than 1800 firms in the Netherlands we find that foremost innovators have a strong propensity to form portfolios consisting of international alliances. Being an innovator or imitator also increases the propensity to form a portfolio of domestic alliances, relative to non-innovators; but this propensity is not stronger for innovators. Innovators appear to derive benefit from both intensive (exploitative) and broad (explorative) use of external information sources. The former sourcing is more important for innovators, while the latter for imitators. Finally, alliance complexity is found to have an inverse U-shape relationship to innovative performance.Innovation, R&D cooperation, Alliance portfolio

A longitudinal analysis of the choice between technology-based strategic alliances and acquisitions in high-tech industries : the case of the ASIC industry

Firms producing application specific integrated circuits (ASICs) have established numerous technology based strategic alliances (SAs) and were involved in merger and acquisition activities (M&As) to enhance their competitive position by improving their learning capabilities and the timely access to technological knowledge that is otherwise unavailable. There exist broad economic and managerial strands of literature about SAs and M&As, but they tell us virtually nothing about the strategic choice of firms between technology based SAs and M&As. This article intends to fill this void. It examines the circumstances in which ASIC-producers choose for SAs or M&As and it analyses how prior SAs influence this choice. Finally, implications for innovation management in high-tech industries are examined.research and development ;