| dc.description.abstract | During the product lifecycle (PLC) startups need to adjust their strategy to remain competitive. To develop a proper strategy, a combination must be made between the technology-push strategy that focuses on resource heterogeneity, and demand-pull strategy that focuses on market heterogeneity. Since it is difficult for starting firms to obtain resources, due to their liability of newness and smallness, the firms need to enter into alliances. However, from a pull-viewpoint in which unique market knowledge is the focal point, alliances can lead to knowledge leaking, resulting in a decrease of the uniqueness of the knowledge. The strategies seem contradictory but can be complementary during the PLC, where the push-strategy is dominant in the prototype phase and the pull-strategy in the commercialization phase. To find alliance partners, entrepreneurs can make use of their former firm network of strong ties. Besides, entrepreneurs have a personal network of strong and weak ties: weak ties to find unique market knowledge and strong ties to extend the firm network. To examine how startups deal with this paradox, of alliancing or not, and what the role of the different networks is, the following research question is answered: How do technology-push or demand-pull conditions influence alliance formation by startups in different phases of the product lifecycle? An exploratory qualitative research design is deployed to examine the narratives of fourteen startups from the consumer electronics industry and fourteen from the clean technology industry. These narratives are obtained by conducting semi-structured interviews and analyzed by using a combination of a paradigmatic and narrative type of data analysis. Based on the findings, it becomes clear that the pull conditions do not have a negative impact on the formation of new alliances in the prototype phase of the PLC. Instead, weak personal ties are deployed to find new ties; new ties are used to extend the firm network. Besides, unique market knowledge is already obtained in the prototype phase by using weak personal ties (consumer electronics industry) or new alliance partners (clean technology industry). In the commercialization phase, also firm ties are used by the clean technology startups to obtain unique market knowledge. Therefore, the technology-push and demand-pull conditions are complementary instead of contradictory, and both have a positive effect on the creation of new alliances and the finding of unique market knowledge. Additionally, this study clarifies the roles of the different networks and how entrepreneurs can deploy these networks. | |
