Strategic alliances versus internal venturing: the impact upon firm performance

Summary form only given, as follows. It is noted that strategic alliances and joint venturing have increasingly become seen as an effective means for assuring growth for young, technology-intensive companies. Whether alliances and joint venturing result in superior growth rates over more internally driven venturing and innovation using a company's own R&D has not been clear. In a study of 100 rapidly growing, independent young technology companies across three industry groups, these two growth strategies were contrasted. The study also controlled for several variables such as life cycle stage, market scope, and age. Results revealed that the most rapidly growing in terms of sales were executing internal venturing strategies, with larger rather than smaller market scopes. This result was independent of life cycle stage and the other controlled variables. While strategic alliances and joint ventures may have important uses to such companies, this study strongly suggests that there remains an important role for internally driven venturing and innovation efforts.< >