Shaping the path to inventive activity: the role of past experience in R&D alliances

In this paper, we investigate a recurrent organizational event—R&D strategic alliances—and analyze its multidimensional effect on inventive activity; in particular, we examine the quality of the inventive process outcome. In so doing, we address the still-unresolved issue of the impact of past experience in explaining performance differences between firms in the realm of alliance inventiveness. Our results offer new insights concerning the crucial drivers of invention quality and technological breakthroughs. As expected, results suggest that—in the area of R&D—alliances formed by experienced partners are more likely to produce inventions that effectively synthesize technological knowledge from more diverse domains. In fact, experienced alliance partners are more likely to generate useful inventions with a greater innovative impact on others’ subsequent inventions—knowledge that can be built upon. Surprisingly, results are indeterminate with regard to whether innovation via R&D alliance increases invention’s degree of applicability across diverse scientific and technological fields that might cite its patent.