Strategic Alliances in the High-Tech Industry

The book discusses the underlying logic of the high-tech industry, arguing that recent technological and strategic developments made interorganizational alliances inevitable. In the last 15 years, strategic alliances became the main driving force for the industry development and nowadays, one cannot think of "stand-alone" strategies and complete independence, due to the proliferation of technology standards, long- or short-term linkages, and the complementary nature of advanced products. The book offers a comprehensive review of existing literature, concerning strategic alliances, management of technology and high-tech markets. It further proposes the model of high-tech value chain, resulting from the nature of new technologies, but constituting the industry structure and impacting businesses of all high-tech companies. A company's technological strategy or domestic industry's policy is directly linked to its assumed role in the globalized value chain: chain leader, complementor and contractor. The book analyzes these three generic partnership strategies, using examples of NTT DoCoMo, Microsoft, Taiwanese electronics manufacturers, Indian offshore software developers and the open source movement, and multiple documentary sources, not widely available to international readers. Managers of high-tech companies will benefit from the book's recommendations, helping them define corporate strategies. The integrated partnership model suggests when, how and with whom to ally in order to stimulate innovation and diffusion of their products and services. The discussed generic strategies include options for market penetration without substantial financial investments, opening doors to young start-up companies and showing them how to gradually grow their businesses. Plural governance model and portfolio of incentives and deterrents help in turn established firms align strategies of their partners and boost the innovativeness of own technology platforms.