Innovation intermediary of technological alliance

Technological alliances play an important role in generating innovations but face effective matchmaking in finding suitable partners in “open innovation” among networks of innovating firms. Intermediaries are external mechanism/institutions that can appropriately support companies in their innovative activities. They are frequently used to build a bridge between different competency constraints among companies. Thus, the purpose of this paper tries to understand the role of a firm's alliance network in view of exploration? What do innovation intermediaries of collaborative partner do? Based on the “Strategic Alliance Database” established by the National Science Council (NSC) in Taiwan, this paper empirically explores the brokerage roles in the alliance that intermediaries facilitate technological innovation and innovation process especially the relationship between cooperation networks. By using the technique of 2-mode network analysis of social network analysis, this research focuses on the question of which the capabilities a technological alliance creates a platform for firms that execute matchmaking for new and/or relevant technologies. The results of this paper reveal the fact that brokerage roles can be used to develop collaborations. The strategic positions of intermediary can activate different resources from the ones embedded within alliance network.