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

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...