Can New Ventures Control Learning and Leakage in Alliances? The Partial Trade-off between Knowledge Acquisition and Protection in Partnerships Formed by Newly Created Businesses

Abstract : This paper explores the extent to which new ventures can control knowledge transfers to and from their alliance partners. We identify individual and organizational-level mechanisms that underlie both the intent to learn new knowledge and the intent to protect from unwanted knowledge leakage in alliances. In turn, we assess whether intent to learn and intent to protect conflict with or reinforce each other. We test our predictions on a sample of 107 alliances involving e-commerce ventures. Our findings suggest that new ventures can use alliances as reliable sources of external knowledge, while also facing an asymmetric trade-off between learning and leakage such that learning efforts interfere with protection but protection efforts do not damage learning outcomes.