The Impact of Accumulating and Reactivating Technological Experience on R&D Alliance Performance

Abstract:     
Drawing on organizational learning theory, we distinguish the entrepreneurial processes of experience accumulation (i.e. gaining technological experience), and experience reactivation (i.e. leveraging the accumulated experience), as two essential stages of knowledge retention. While controlling for alliance experience, we further use new data of 196 biopharmaceutical R&D alliances to examine the effects of the technology recipient's accumulation and reactivation of technological experience on R&D alliance success. The patent‐based experience measures at the level of specific technology fields provide strong support for distinguishing experience accumulation and reactivation, which positively interact in interorganizational learning. Experience reactivation strengthens the positive effects of experience accumulation on alliance performance, and it contributes to avoiding organizational inertia in intertemporal knowledge transfer. In particular, our newly developed technology‐specific measures help to explain inconsistent findings of earlier studies, which often relied on firm‐level R&D expenditures to capture the level of prior technological knowledge and absorptive capacity.

Number of Pages in PDF File: 23

Accepted Paper Series