Innovation alliances: Balancing value creation dynamics, competitive intensity and market overlap

Abstract When created and captured value is unbalanced in innovation alliances, instabilities may emerge. Competitive tensions between the partners may further destabilize the value creation process. How these dynamics affect the outcomes of innovation alliances is still far from clear. This study focuses on expert power, relative private and common benefits, and perceived competitive intensity as well as structural market overlap between partners. While direct effects of expert power or the (im-)balances in intra-alliance innovation-related value dynamics do not emerge, we find that these effects are strongly moderated by the level of competition. When perceived competitive intensity is high, the partner's expert power turns out to be less beneficial, and imbalance towards private benefits becomes detrimental for value creation. On the other hand, when the market overlap between the partners is high, the expert power of partners, as well as common benefits become more beneficial to innovation-related value creation.