Complementary assets, strategic alliances, and the incumbent’s advantage: an empirical study of industry and firm effects in the biopharmaceutical industry

We argue that incumbents may be in a position to adapt to radical technological change via interfirm cooperation with new entrants when the incumbents have complementary assets within their firm boundaries that are critical to commercializing the new technology. We study 889 strategic alliances of pharmaceutical companies with new biotechnology firms. We find that an incumbent’s alliances with providers of the new technology are positively...