مشارکت فن آوری استراتژیک شرکت های بزرگ در صنعت تکنولوژی اطلاعات و ارتباطات اروپا

In the era of ‘‘alliance capitalism’’, the increasing number of strategic technological partnerships STPs. has been mainly recorded in the science-based fields, of which information and communications technology ICT. is a leading sector. The establishment of STPs has also characterised the European ICT industry. The growing technological interrelatedness and the need to acquire capabilities in related fields have been identified in the literature as major explanations for the increase in corporate technological co-operation. This paper investigates the role of corporate technological specialisation factors in the conclusion of STPs in the European ICT industry by carrying out a dynamic analysis. Accordingly, the patterns followed by corporate technological partnerships in the industry in question are investigated since the late 1970s. Based on US patent data granted to the world’s largest firms as well as STPs data, the results of the econometric analysis are consistent with the view that the more similar partners’ technological portfolios are with one another, the easier it is to absorb each other’s capabilities.

In the 1980s, the increased adoption of strategic technological partnerships STPs. as a form of organisation of economic activity has been identified as a main feature of a new phase of the capitalist system Gerlach, 1992; Dunning, 1995, 1997., where competitiveness is increasingly pursuid through cooperation. The growth in the number of technologybased inter-firm alliances has mainly been recorded in science-based fields such as information and communications technology, ICT. Hagedoorn, 1993b; Hagedoorn and Schakenraad, 1992; Duysters and Hagedoorn, 1995.. This trend may be interpreted as a new corporate strategic response to increasing technological interrelatedness and complexity in order to co-ordinate change and innovation effectively Based upon a resource pooling strategy, corporate alliances promote synergies between allied companies, thus affecting the development of firms’ internal capabilities and furthermore their technological profiles over time. Since inter-firm alliances tend to develop in areas in which firms shares complementary capabilities, partner’s choice can be predicted by firms’ technological overlap Mowery et al., 1998.. Nonetheless, a distinction should be made between complementary and close complementary firm- specific paths of development Cantwell and Barrera, 1998.. The fruitful exchange of knowledge requires the complemenarity of activities, but cooperative learning creates a closer complementarity between those activities. Technological collaborative agreements are likely to promote partners’ technological convergence by encouraging coordination between partners’ internal paths of innovative learning. By contrast, in the former, firms’ learning paths become more localised, although their activities remain com- plementary ibid... However, if alliances enable firms to cope with the fast rate of technological development, they cannot substitute in-house investment in order to enhance firm’s technological competencies. Multinational corporations MNCs. still need to diversify in the range of technologies they master since a wider range of specialised knowledge is now required for the production and distribution of specific products Granstrand and Sjo¨lander, 1990; Granstrand et al., 1997.. The growth in STPs has also characterised the European ICT industry, where a cooperative strategic approach has been adopted to deal with the issue of European competitiveness in electronics. For this purpose, European electronic corporations have increasingly targeted technological collaboration as a major strategy in their agenda. Using data on patents granted in the US to the world’s largest firms as well as data on STPs, this paper aims to evaluate the role of corporate technological specialisation factors in the completion of STPs in the European ICT industry. The novelty of the paper lies in the fact that few studies have addressed the issue of corporate technological specialisation dynamics in the conclusion of STPs. Moreover, as the paper deals with this issue in the context of a high-tech industry, the results of the analysis appear to have relevant implications for both corporate strategy and public policy agenda. Strategic technological agreements are understood as inter-firm long-term cooperative relationships concerning one or more areas of activity, where combined innovative activity or an interchange of technology is at least part of the agreement and the contractual mechanisms can be more or less formally specified. The ‘‘strategic’’ character is given by the fact that the agreement improves the future value of the firm rather than simply minimising the net costs. As discussed above, firms are willing to enter alliances in order to acquire partner’s capabilities related to their fields of competencies. Therefore, firms with overlapping portfolios of technological specialisation are likely to become partners. Combining the patent data drawn from the Reading patents database with the Advanced Research Programme on Agree- ments ARPA. database — see Appendix A — two hypotheses are tested over the period 1978–1995 in the context of the European ICT industry. Hypothesis 1: the degree of overlap between partners’ technological specialisation profiles has a positive influence upon the formation of STPs. The closer companies’ co-specialisation, 1 the greater the likelihood of alliances between them for the purpose of technological cooperation; but, if firms are not co-specialised, the greater is the degree of technological dissimilarities between them, the less likely the formation of an alliance. Hypothesis 2: partners’ technological specialisation over time is likely to further converge in the case of alliances between firms that were co-specialised in the previous period, while already dissimilar partners are likely to further diverge if they have concluded alliances previously. Further technological convergencerdivergence may be linked as well to the extent of technological diversification of firms over time. The organisation of the paper is as follows. The role of STPs in the ICT-based paradigm is discussed in Section 2. Section 3 sheds some light on the data on US patents and STPs used. The econometric methodology and the measures adopted are exposed in Section 4. Section 5 deals with the empirical results on the specialisation dynamics in the European ICT corporate STPs. Section 6 discusses the implication of the findings for the nature and evolution of the European ICT industry. Section 7 draws some conclusions.

Collaborative partnerships have been increasingly adopted as a form of business operation in the early 1980s. The 1980s’ increased adoption of STPs as a form of organisation of economic activity has been identified as a main feature of a new phase of the capitalist system Gerlach, 1992; Dunning, 1995, 1997., where competitiveness is increasingly pursued through co-operation. Within this overall frame, this paper makes two contributions to the existing literature on the subject. First of all, in this so-called alliance capitalism phase, technological overlap between similar European ICT companies is found to be a major factor in the conclusion of STPs. Based upon a resource pooling strategy, corporate alliances promote synergies between allied companies, thus affecting the development of firms’ internal capabilities and furthermore their technological profiles over time. Since inter-firm alliances tend to develop in areas in which firms share complementary capabilities, a partner’s choice can be predicted by firms’ technological over- lap Mowery et al., 1998.. Companies sharing technological commonalties can enhance their intralearning development through collaborative agreements. The co-operative option allows firms to face the increasing pace of technological change by absorbing each other’s complementary technological competencies. Nonetheless, a distinction should be made between complementary and close complemen- tary firm-specific paths of development Cantwell and Barrera, 1998.. The fruitful exchange of knowledge requires the complementarity of activities, but co-operative learning creates a closer complementarity between those activities. In the latter case, partners’ technological profiles converge as collaborative agreements encourage co-ordination between partners’ internal paths of innovative learning. By contrast, in the former case, firms’ learning paths become more localised, although their activities remain complementary ibid... However, if alliances enable firms to cope with the fast rate of technological development, they cannot substitute in-house investment in order to enhance firms’ technological competencies. MNCs still need to diversify in the range of technologies they master since a wider range of specialised knowledge is now required for the production and distribution of specific products Granstrand and Sjo¨lander, 1990; Granstrand et al., 1997.. Second, the findings of the paper point out that in the European ICT industry, participation in STPs and corporate technological diversification are major determinants of technological convergence between already similarrco-specialised partners. As far as technological collaboration is concerned, this is the case if corporate co-operation involved a transfer of knowledge rather than a simple exchange. In the former case, a complementary division of labour is likely to develop between the partner companies, which come closer together in terms of specialisation profiles. Following Brass et al. 1998., partners’ similarity and interaction are mutually reinforcing factors as network formation proceeds through the establishment of new relationships building on the base of existing inter-firm ties. Moreover, firms with prior alliances are likely to trust each other more than other firms whom they have had no alliances Gulati, 1995.. The positive influence of technological diversification on partners’ technological convergence is consistent with the view that large firms are required to master a wide range of technologies in order to be able to match radical changes in technology with equivalent changes in production. Thus, technological specialisation profiles of European electronic partners are also found to be convergent as a result of the technological diversity developed within collaborative agreements. Thus, in high-tech industries such as ICT. corporate technological specialisation factors seem to play a great role in the cooperative development of technology.