In the past recent years, innovation patterns of companies have been defined by an increasing significance linked to external sources of data. Firms are motivated to externally obtain and integrate additional supplementary and complementary aspects to generate innovative capabilities and develop new products, ideas, and business knowledge. Today, firms depend on technological alliances to support their activities and foster innovativeness. In this regard, this aspect establishes and tests a framework for assessing the external drivers of an entity’s innovative performance. Therefore, it is important to explore the influence of technological alliances on a firm’s innovative and general performance.
While this trend is most evident in research-intensive sectors, its adoption is propelled by different drivers. These alliances are growing in popularity because of technological interconnectedness, the reduced costs of obtaining external R&D inputs as well as the shortened t product life cycles (Jacob, Belderbos, & Gilsing, 2013) . These strategic technology alliances are increasingly acknowledged as a crucial mechanism to access external data. Cross border alliances play an important role in posing geographic diversity, which generally boosts the performance of participants.
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Technological alliances are the establishment of cooperative relationships aimed at technology transfer that can have a profound impact on the product-market positioning of the participants (Hagedoorn & Schakenraad, 1994). The popularity of this concept can be attributed to various contemporary trends in technology and consumerism. More so, these alliances allow firms to compete in the increasingly globalized markets (Hagedoorn & Schakenraad, 1994) . Recent and significant drivers of this globalization of alliance activities include innovative international competition, the dynamic nature of science and engineering as well as rising R&D costs that drive firms to seek low-cost technology options. Another important driver is the enhanced climate in emerging economies for R&D activities in multinational firms owing to reforms regarding intellectual property rights.
Collaborations have become a major phenomenon today. Indeed, it is important to explore the scope of partnerships in relevance to size as well as impact. Such collaboration contributes to the accumulation of region-specific alliances that may help alleviate issues regarding institutional or cultural differences hence obtaining additional value from partnerships within the region (Jacob, Belderbos, & Gilsing, 2013). Moreover, such partnerships should be viewed as opportunities to build a reputation as attractive and reliable participants. When firms build on their alliances across both emerging and developed economies, they boost the geographical variation of their alliance portfolios. Foregoing these crucial alliance opportunities can in many ways risk the future of competitiveness and innovative performance
Notably, it is important that Western firms closely evaluate and consider alliance opportunities with emerging economies, as ignoring such opportunities has the potential to jeopardize competitiveness and innovation performance in future (Jacob, Belderbos, & Gilsing, 2013). Firms are likely to miss out on the growing pools of high-quality engineering and science talent at relatively lower costs in emerging economies. Besides the cost advantages, entities risk lack of access to new technological advancements that mostly originate from emerging economies.
In conclusion, it is agreeable that the rising competitive pressure from internationalization and the subsequent search for wider sources of new information have boosted the globalization of R&D and external data acquisition, directed towards emerging economies in particular. International alliances and related activities enhance improved understanding of foreign partners and their defining characteristics, posing the possibility of subsequent alliances and activities. Generally, there are complex impacts of external sourcing strategies in terms of technological alliances and instruments on market outcomes and effective innovation in firms.
References
Hagedoorn, J., & Schakenraad, J. (1994). The effect of strategic technology alliances on company performance. Strategic management journal, 15 (4), 291-309.
Jacob, J., Belderbos, R., & Gilsing, V. (2013). Technology alliances in emerging economies: persistence and interrelation in European firms' alliance formation. R&D Management, 43 (5), 447-460
