Many firms undertake alliances as a tactic in their competitive strategy to gain technological benefits from their competitors. Little is known, however, about how simultaneous competition and cooperation between rivals (i.e. co-opetition) influence the alliance governance modes. To bridge this deficit, we integrated a variety of different theoretical perspectives into the concept of co-opetition. Based on the dynamic nature of co-opetitive relationships, we also consider the moderating effect of external technological turbulence on the choice of technology alliances. We tested our hypotheses on a sample of 405 international technology alliances in different industries. It was found that the inter-firm co-opetitive relationship results in alliance member preference to choose contractual agreements as the governance mode in new alliances. However, when external technological turbulence increases, firms tend to tighten alliance governance (i.e. through equity joint ventures) in response to the turbulence.

In the currently rapidly changing business world, innovation has not only become the key to survival and success, but also the defining challenge of organisations. For latecomer firms, however, because of their inherent resource constraints, innovation has become a far more complex undertaking, similar to a multidimensional puzzle. Although there have been an increasing number of practitioner-based surveys, a discrepancy still remains between academia and industry concerning the role and importance of R&D in innovation. Therefore, this study carried out an industry–university–institution survey of Taiwan, based on a multidimensional framework of the innovation puzzle: human, R&D, flow and connection. The results reveal several interesting clues and provide a better understanding of the innovation puzzle for latecomers, and more importantly, resolves the puzzle that could help latecomers identify where new opportunities lie and what weaknesses they must strengthen.