In this paper, we explore the relationship between firms' approaches to open innovation and their decision to participate in Standardization alliances. Based on micro data of Dutch Companies surveyed in the Forth Community Innovation Survey we show that the importance of extemal knowledge is positively correlated with participation in Standardization. This suggests that firms aim to access the knowledge of other Companies and stakeholders in Order to increase their own knowledge base. The analysis also shows that firms cooperating with different actors are more likely to join Standardization. Due to the positive relationships with incoming knowledge spillovers and forms of Cooperation, we conclude that Standardization represents a specific form of collaborative knowledge-sharing and knowledge-creating strategy. In addition, we are able to show that absorptive capacity measured via Companies’ research intensity is promoting the involvement in Standardization. Besides the focus on knowledge and Cooperation variables, we explore the traditionally considered factors for alliances Formation and show that firm size, export activities and patent protection are positively correlated with participation in Standardization.
This paper explores the decision of small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) to participate in official standard setting alliances. Based on micro data of German firms in the electrical engineering and machinery industry, we show that innovation-related variables follow the predictions of our hypotheses. Research and development (R&D) intensity exhibits an inverse U-shaped relationship on the likelihood to join alliances. The positive relation suggests that SMEs aim to access the knowledge of larger firms whereas the negative relationship indicates that SMEs exceeding a certain threshold of R&D activity are reluctant to participate in standardization because their knowledge is too essential to disclose to competitors. The importance to access external knowledge via standardization committees is underlined by a positive correlation with the relevance of incoming knowledge spillovers and a negative correlation with the relative size of companies' patent portfolios. Besides these variables, we also explore the traditionally considered factors for alliance formation and show that firm size and export intensity are positively correlated with participation.
In this paper, we identify the strategic motives of German manufacturing companies in the electrical engineering and machinery industry to be involved in standards development organizations. First, we present the general motives for the formation of strategic alliances and relate them to specific standardization motives. Then, we identify pursuing specific company interests, solving technical problems, knowledge seeking, influencing regulation, and facilitating market access as motives to standardize by means of factor analysis. In a second step, we test hypotheses on the relationship between the importance of strategic motives and firm level variables, e.g. R&D intensity, innovation activities, and firm size. The results reveal that firms in electric engineering and machinery have a particularly strong interest in ensuring industry-friendly design of regulations, which can be achieved by standards. Moreover, the results confirm that small firms also from these two sectors are active in standardization alliances to access knowledge from other involved stakeholders.