Whereas incumbents often struggle to respond to disruptive innovations, start-up companies frequently face difficulties in establishing them within existing ecosystems. Phased acquisitions, that is, trajectories where an incumbent initially takes an equity stake in a start-up and subsequently...

Collaboration and acquisition have traditionally been observed as two alternative strategies when accessing external technologies. However, real option scholars have recently argued that firms can also engage in transitional technology sourcing trajectories where collaboration and acquisition...

Transitional governance trajectories – i.e. trajectories in which an established firm first engages in equity collaboration with an entrepreneurial firm and subsequently acquires the entrepreneurial firm – are becoming an increasingly popular strategy for established firms to get access to...