The knowledge link: how firms compete through strategic alliances

394 Pages·1991·0.94 MB·English

by  Joseph Badaracco

The Knowledge Link : How Firms Compete
title:
Through Strategic Alliances
author: Badaracco, Joseph.
publisher: Harvard Business School Press
isbn10 | asin: 0875842267
print isbn13: 9780875842264
ebook isbn13: 9780585160887
language: English
Joint ventures--Management, Competition,
Information resources management,
subject
Strategic alliances (Business) , Strategic
planning.
publication date: 1991
lcc: HD62.47.B33 1991eb
ddc: 658.1/8
Joint ventures--Management, Competition,
Information resources management,
subject: Strategic alliances (Business) , Strategic
planning.
Page iii
The Knowledge Link
How Firms Compete through Strategic Alliances
Joseph L. Badaracco, Jr.
Harvard Business School
Page iv
© 1991 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College
All rights reserved.
Printed in the United States of America.
95 94 93 92 5 4 3 2
The paper used in this publication meets the
requirements of
the American National Standard for Permanence
of Paper for
Printed Library Materials Z39.49-1984.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Badaracco, Joseph.
The knowledge link: how firms compete through strategic alliances
/ Joseph L. Badaracco, Jr.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 0-87584-226-7 (acid free paper):
1. Joint venturesManagement. 2. Competition. 3. Information
resources management. 4. Strategic planning. I. Title.
HD62.47.B33 1991
658.1'8dc20 90-44763
CIP
Page v
For Maria, Anna, and Luisa
Page vi
Contents
Preface ix
Introduction 1
1. The Globalization of Knowledge 17
2. Migratory Knowledge 33
3. Product Links 53
4. Embedded Knowledge 79
5. Knowledge Links 107
6. Managing Alliances 129
7. Conclusion 147
Notes 155
Index 181
Page ix
Preface
In teaching about strategy and management at the Harvard Business
School, I once concentrated on managers' tasks "inside" companies
and on the competitors and markets "outside" companies. Other
academics, managers, and consultants split up the world in the same
fashion. Firms were, as one economist put it, islands of managerial
coordination in a sea of market relationships. But this is an outdated
view. Companies are now breaking down barriers which, like the
Berlin Wall, have endured for decades. Their managers are now
working in a world that consists not simply of markets and firms, but
of complex relationships with a variety of other organizations.
Four years ago, when I began this study, I did not anticipate this
conclusion. My plan was to understand why many U.S. companies
had been forming strategic alliances such as joint ventures, supplier
partnerships, and research consortia. This book examines these
alliances in depth. But it goes further and presents them as the
consequences of a deeper, potentially revolutionary change.
I have called this change the globalization of knowledge. In essence, a
rapidly growing number of countries, companies, universities, and
other organizations are contributing to an enormous worldwide pool
of commercializable knowledge. Some of this knowledge is
migratory: it moves rapidly across company and country boundaries.
Other knowledge is deeply embedded in social relationships. In
response, many executives are now linking their companies to other
organizations in innovative ways. Thus, the focus of this book is not
"the firm" as

Page x
it appears in traditional books on business and economics. It is the
vast, emerging, partially charted territories of knowledge-driven
relationships that now tie many companies to scores of other
organizations around the world.
This is an unusual topicas a focus of scholarly effort, the subject is
embryonic. Data are scarce, and many basic concepts are in flux. Only
recently have scholars recognized that the complex sphere of alliances
around many firms may be a full-fledged form of organization, just as
important as the markets and internal activities that have been studied
so carefully for decades. From a managerial perspective, too, the topic
is a new one. The large-scale "strategic alliance experiment" by U.S.
companies is scarcely a decade old. For these reasons, this book and
the research behind it are inevitably unorthodox.
Early in my research, I realized that no single discipline, including
business administration, would provide a complete perspective on the
issues. Hence, I have drawn upon and synthesized ideas from scholars
in several fields. Some were economists, such as Kenneth Arrow and
Kenneth Boulding, who have studied the economics of knowledge;
others were sociologists, such as Daniel Bell, who have studied the
so-called knowledge explosion. Historians, political scientists, and
some organizational theorists have studied how technology is
transferred among companies, groups, or nations. Searching further
afield, I drew upon ideas developed by the Oxford philosopher Gilbert
Ryle and the Hungarian-born chemist and philosopher of science,
Michael Polanyi. To make this research accessible to a wide range of
readers, I have presented my ideas in a long interpretive essay written
in ordinary English. The endnotes, however, show in detail the
intellectual genealogy of ideas and findings drawn from other
scholars.
This study differs from virtually all previous work on strategic
alliances. Other studies typically examine a large sample of a
particular kind of alliance. Such a study might examine the
international joint ventures created by 50 major American companies.
This is the equivalent of studying all the shortstops on a large number
of baseball teams. In contrast, I examined the wide