Ties that matter: The impact of alliance partner knowledge recombination novelty on knowledge utilization in R&D alliances

Abstract Whereas extant alliance research tends to consider the knowledge pool of partner firms as a set of independent components, we highlight that alliance partners’ components are interconnected. In particular, we introduce the concept of alliance partner knowledge recombination novelty – i.e., the extent to which an alliance partner has created component ties that no other firm within the industry has created – and hypothesize that it has an inverted U-shaped relationship with the focal firm's utilization of the alliance partner's knowledge. We also expect this relationship to be moderated by the focal firm's own knowledge recombination novelty. Analyzing 313 R&D alliance dyads of 70 firms in the fuel cell industry, we find support for the hypothesized inverted U-shaped relationship between an alliance partner's knowledge recombination novelty and the focal firm's knowledge utilization from the alliance partner. However, we do not find support for a moderation effect of the focal firm's knowledge recombination novelty. Based on these findings, we demonstrate the importance of framing alliance partner knowledge pools as sets of interconnected components, where alliance partners’ history of knowledge recombination shapes the focal firm's knowledge utilization rates.