Cooperation and Competition Among New Ventures: The Role of Genealogical Cohorts

Past research has examined generational links between parent and progeny firms, demonstrating how founders of progeny firms utilize knowledge and routines obtained during their tenure with the parent firm to help them gain a competitive advantage within their industry. However, this research has focused primarily on the parent-progeny relationship. This paper extends research into entrepreneurship and organizational genealogy by showing how cooperation and competition is simultaneously enhanced within cohorts of sibling ventures who share the same organizational parent. We demonstrate our findings on a sample of 658 firms in the biotech industry founded from 1990-2000, showing that sibling ties increase the occurrence and effectiveness of alliances, while also reducing the mobility barriers that result in increased competition for human capital.