Emerging Asian ICT global players: natural born collaborators or stuck with aliens?

Researchers studying firm’s strategy have begun to recognize the role of alliances, alliances portfolio and alliances networks in access to the partners resources and it’s impact on a firms‘ performance, industry competition dynamics, and industry structure. Nevertheless, most studies have focused on firms’ alliance portfolios analysis based on single country only, mainly US Banking or Software Industry. The real “explosion” of alliances is the phenomena clearly observed in a global ICT Industry. ICT Industry is the one of the fastest-growing Industries directly shaping global communication and leading changes in many other market sectors. In this undoubtedly pioneering domain of changes caused by digital convergence, convergence of products and services we can observe an extreme growth of meaning of interfirm cooperation - alliances, alliance portfolios and alliance networks, as well as mergers and acquisitions. On the example of 30 leading global ICT giants and 10,247 alliances in their alliance portfolios, this study empirically tested and supported hypothesis that ICT firms from more “collective” cultures, or cultures characterized by “relational mindset” are more willing to cooperate with culturally diverse partners, forming multiple weak alliances (exploration alliances) then firms from individualistic cultures. The question appears that are they “natural born” collaborators or they stuck with existing Western giants on the global market? Quantitative analysis results have been illustrated by two examples of firms’ alliance portfolios: one from China and one from France.