Let’s Find it Together: Collaborative Search Based on Collective Absorptive Capacity

Besides internal R&D activities as the main known sources of local search and absorptive capacity, firms may choose to collaborate in research alliances to leverage their common stocks of knowledge and expertise to improve their knowledge searching and creative processes. In this study, we examine the determinants of collaborative learning in research alliances. To this extent, we extend the firm-level construct absorptive capacity to a dyadic- level construct, collective absorptive capacity, based on the partner firms’ knowledge profile in their overlapping and non-overlapping knowledge categories as well as the quality of their communication. We developed hypotheses pertaining to the impact of collective absorptive capacity on the collaborative learning in research alliances and tested them on a sample of R&D alliances in the semiconductor industry from 1990 to 2002. The results show that collaborative learning in research alliances is associated with the attributes of partner firms’ knowledge profiles,...