Search

This paper describes an explanatory study of business strategy, size of firm, and the use of technical alliances in a sample of 52 semiconductor firms. The study seeks to view and understand technical alliances not in terms of when a firm chooses to engage in a particular kind of technical alliance, as much of the literature does, but in terms of the magnitude and importance of technical alliances in a firm's strategy and the factors that determine this. The use of technical alliances is pervasive across Porter's generic strategies and across emerging and mature product and process technologies. Both nonusers and firms spending the highest percentage of their R & D budgets on technical alliances tend to have strategies emphasizing technically unique products. Spending on consortia research varies significantly by size of firm, with small firms spending the lowest percentage of their R & D budgets on consortia research. The data suggest that firms may still be experimenting with technical alliances and that present usage patterns may not be stable. Hypotheses aredeveloped and directions for future research are proposed.