In this study, we investigate the economic and strategic value of open innovation alliances (OIAs), in which collaborators and competitors integrate in the pursuit of the codevelopment of technological innovations. Given that OIAs differ substantially from traditional, closed alliances in many aspects, including their strategic scope and scale, governing mechanisms, and member composition, it is important to understand and assess the potential value inherent in these new modes of collaboration. Furthermore, OIAs evolve over time as the participating members are free to enter and leave at will. Therefore, we also examine the on-going value creation and wealth spillover that result from changes in membership. Moreover, we investigate how a firm's participation in an IT-based open alliance alters the market value of its rivals operating within the same marketplace. To gain additional insight into the factors that moderate the market valuation of OIA participation, several contextual factors, including the degree of partner heterogeneity, innovation type, and degree of openness of the OIAs are used to account for variability in abnormal returns. Based on 194 observations,we found that allying firms realize significant positive abnormal returns when their entry into an OIA is made public. The results also suggest that substantial excessive returns accrue to the allying firms with the related entry of a market leader firm. Furthermore, we discovered that a firm's entry into an OIA increases, rather than decreases, the market valuation of its rivals. Interestingly, an incumbent rival that did not participate in the alliance appears to gain greater "free-riding" benefits from the OIA, as compared to peer rivals. Innovation type and openness were significantly associated with the amount of abnormal returns accruing to allying firms, while no significance was found for partner heterogeneity. Finally, we conclude with a discussion of the implications of our findings for research and practice with respect to value cocreation in multifirm environments.
Using agent-based simulation experiments, we investigate the outcome of SAs between two smaller online search engine companies in competition with a dominant market leader in settings where an advertiser's decision making is the consequence of a combination of NI (e.g., an individual's willingness to follow others' decisions) and IP. In particular, we focus on a context in which the combined search engine company competes with a market leader holding a larger share of the market than the two runner-up "underdogs" combined. Our results indicate that, with the presence of NI and cascading effects, an alliance with "only" 35%-40% combined market share could compete with a leader whose market share, at the time of an alliance, is 60%-65%. Although important, size alone might be insufficient to build the market as suggested by the "vanilla" network effect theory. Another noteworthy finding is that a nonlinear association exists between NI and an alliance outcome; the combined runner-up companies have the best chance of success when the extent of NI is midrange, rather than on the high or low end of continuum. Contrary to the conventional view, this finding might also stimulate discussions among network science researchers. Furthermore, our results suggest that NI substantially moderates the relationship between the combined market share at the time of an alliance and the likelihood of resulting alliance success.