Complementarity and External Linkages: The Strategies of the Large Firms in Biotechnology.

In biotechnology, large firms enter into different kinds of linkages with universities and small/medium sized research-intensive firms. The authors test the hypothesis that the strategies of external linkage of the large firms with other parties are complementary to one another. They show that if any two strategies are complementary (i.e., undertaking more of one strategy raises the marginal value of the other), then they are positively correlated. Using data for a sample of large U.S., European, and Japanese chemical and pharmaceutical producers, the authors find that the strategies above are positively correlated even after controlling for firm-specific characteristics. Copyright 1990 by Blackwell Publishing Ltd.